Honor Thy Regard
by SigilBroken
Summary: Post-ADWD. ADWD Spoilers. Canon Compliant.
1. Honor And Oaths

"_We should water the horses_," Jaime hissed, mocking Brienne with her last statement. He glanced to his right at her. _Take the hint, do not reach for your sword._

Jaime nearly reached for his own sword as the hairs on his neck began to raise, but the undergrowth rustled to his left and right; his horse had lifted its head from the river, ears flicked to the rear to indicate an approach from behind. Too late for swords; there were too many footsteps, and they were too well organized. Negotiation was the tactic for this fight.

Brienne did not meet his gaze, clutching her horse's reins to her chest, she stepped back and to the side, bowing her head slightly as someone approached from the rear.

_So that is the way of it_. His breath caught and his guts clenched at the invisible blow which had caught him so unawares, but he smiled mockingly, knowingly at Brienne and made the grin wider as he turned to meet his fate.

"Kingslayer." A hooded woman approached him, but the word came from a wild bearded creature approaching from some distance behind her.

Jaime angled his head and bowed, smile firmly in place. _Could I swim with one hand? _Even as he had the thought, he heard men wading into the water behind him. "You have me at a loss, ser, for clearly you expected me, but our meeting has caught me by surprise. Can you be Thoros of Myr? Bit worse for wear."

Brienne shuffled a bit off to the side. _Uncomfortably, perhaps?_ He would not look at her.

Thoros stepped up next to the lady as she swept the hood off her shoulders. Horror revealed itself as the fabric fell away and Jaime's face constricted a bit as though reacting to the smell of a rotted animal carcass. _Rotted fish, more like._

"Ah, my Lady Catelyn," he said, sweeping her a mocking vow. "Lovely as when first I laid eyes on you as a young maid. _Refreshing _after a day in the company of my Lady of Tarth."

Sickeningly, the remains of Catelyn Stark put a hand to her ruined throat and whispered to Thoros beside her, who spoke.

"You are sentenced to die, Kingslayer. For your broken vows. For my lady's murdered children."

"My trial is too brief," Jaime replied. "I demand combat."

Catelyn stared at him with what might once have been her eyes and he thought he saw her look at his missing hand. He knew he heard her strangled laugh. She whispered again.

"Name your champion," Thoros said.

Jaime grinned. _Sword hand or no, I will not die easily, crone. _"I am, as ever, mine own champion."

"I will be his champion," Brienne said, stepping forward.

Catelyn's rotting head swung to look at Brienne, her grip on her throat tightening as she spoke in an eerie rasp, "Kingslayer's whore. You were to kill him. You will be my champion and fulfill your vow."

Thoros spoke for the first time without direction from Catelyn, his gaze holding Brienne's. "Your squire and the knight are free."

Jaime watched Brienne's gaze find a boy and a man at the edge of the group surrounding them. Both were having their hands untied. Brienne nodded and drew her sword, finally turning to look at Jaime squarely.

He saw the regret in her eyes.

"The Kingslayer for a Squire," he said, drawing his sword as they began to circle one another. "That will be the song of my death, don't you think?" Cersei, if she yet lived, would doubtless find a Stark or two to flay alive in retribution for this. If for no other reason than she likely wanted the pleasure of killing him herself, now.

He laughed as he moved in and took a swing which Brienne easily parried. _Tyrion would have loved this_.

_It feels like betrayal, but doubtless this is justice. I'm still not going to make it easy for you, wench._

They battled carefully. He knew she would wait for him to tire. She didn't know her strategy had become his own. Thrust, parry, thrust, parry, regroup, stare at one another. Time after time they eyed one another from a few steps away.

Around them, the crowd of men watched. None cheering, just critiquing the fight with annoyed calls of "Faster!" "Attack!" "Finish it!".

At last, he thrust and her strength failed her for a moment; her block didn't hold, it faltered just enough and he gave her a deep cut on the side of her ribs. He'd noticed earlier that her arm was injured, she _had_ looked worn and exhausted, but surely she wasn't _this _weakened.

She no longer looked him in the eye, just watched his sword. He swung in a wide arc, an easy move to block, but though she brought her blade up to kiss his, she let it slide away from holding him off. He grazed her arm as he tried to pull the blow back, for he knew her game now.

"_Wench_." Jaime spat out at her, exasperated.

He made another wide swing and moved in close, pulling his stroke up and easily pushing her sword off to the side with his. He grabbed her, doing his best to make it look like they wrestled. He wanted to scream at her, but kept his voice low, moving his lips close to her ear. "You lead me to the noose, then think to put your own neck in it?"

She shoved him off with her left hand, stopping to pant for a moment before standing to meet his next blow. Her clothing had shifted during their embrace and now he saw the unmistakable bruising at her neck. A noose indeed.

She blocked his blow as blood seeped from the wound on her ribs. _Stubborn, bloody fool._

He paused, sword point on the ground, trying to look exhausted. _How many men? Thirty? Thoros will be a fight._

Loudly, he drew breath and gave a shout as he made to charge Brienne. His feet were still good, even if his arm wasn't. So easily, his stride turned a few steps to the side as he sliced, instead removing Catelyn's head from her shoulders. It was pandemonium then, two men clumsily drew weapons and charged. He caught one in the neck and tripped the other.

The air was full of shouts and confusion. He could hear Brienne battling behind him, but was too busy trying to wrench his leg free of someone's grip while fending off sword cuts.

When the fight abruptly ended, he could see Thoros had somehow stopped it. Brienne stood at his side, sword still drawn. The squire and other man were with them as well. A dozen bodies lay strewn around them. The remaining group watched them warily.

"There's an end to it," Thoros of Myr said. "Lady Brienne, will you see to my lady's daughters?"

"As I have promised," Brienne said.

"Then go."

That night, they took shelter in an abandoned cottage. Their feet had carried them as far as they could go. Brienne had somehow stayed upright and moving despite her injuries, but once in the small house, he watched as she leaned against the wall, then slid down it to sit on the floor before finally slumping over even further to lay on her side.

"Ser. My lady, that wound." The boy knelt beside her. She swatted him away. Hyle Hunt was searching for linens as Jaime knelt before her, clumsily beginning to undo her hauberk with his one practically useless hand.

"No," she said, pushing ineffectually at his fingers, her eyes tightly closed in obvious pain.

He gestured to the boy to help him. They wrestled her out of her outer garments as she gasped in pain. Jaime tried to lay her down gently on the floor. She clutched the laces of her tunic as the boy began to loosen them. Jamie moved the boy out of the way and merely lifted the tunic's hem. Hunt had returned, kneeling with them, holding somewhat clean linen in hand. Brienne shoved at Jaime's hand, stopping him before he could reveal the wound.

Jaime laughed. "Nothing I haven't already seen."

Hunt looked up sharply then.

"We'll protect your bleeding modesty," Jaime told her, shifting to sit on the floor and sliding her head head and shoulders up onto his lap. She said nothing, just lay limp with her eyes closed. He pulled her arms ups and to the right and leaned on them with his right arm to hold her, then clapped his left hand firmly over her meager left breast atop her tunic. She gasped, but Hunt took his meaning and pulled the garment up to where it was stopped by his hand.

Jaime looked down at her face, her left forearm was thrown up over her forehead, but her eyes were open as the boy and Hunt went about cleaning the wound.

He stared hard into her eyes and she stared back. In their struggle, the bandage on her face had shifted to show the jagged, purple mush of her cheek. Her visage twisted into a rictus of pain as the boy began to sew her wound closed. "Come now, what pain can there be for one so honorable as Brienne of Tarth? Are your oaths not a salve to your wounds? Are your vows not warm bedfellows?"

"I wish you no ill," she hissed out through clenched teeth.

She looked away from him then, panting through the pain. Jaime felt her suffering shudder through him, but the only tone he could muster was mocking. "Would it matter if you did? The Kingslayer deserves none of your concern. They say he isn't worth a tenth of the lowest squire. He cannot even best a woman in a sword fight anymore."

Jaime tried to laugh, but it was a raw cackle. When he stopped, the silence in the room was heavy, and he looked up to see Hunt and the boy had ceased their ministrations to stare at him. _If that's pity, I'll gut them both._ How had Tyrion survived even a day of this treatment?

"_Finish. Be quick about it,_" Jaime ground out at them. He looked down at his hand on her breast and the fabric bunched up over it; he smirked at the absurdity of it.

Hunt and the boy finished soon enough. Brienne pulled her arms away from him and rolled off his lap into a heap on the floor next to him, her injured left side held up in the air, still exposed. Hunt knelt and settled a dirty blanket over her.

"Sleep, my Lady," Hunt said, giving Jaime a glare of warning not to interfere with her rest.

"I'll take first watch," Jaime said. Sore and bruised, he pushed himself up off the ground and stepped outside.

Dark clouds hid the moon, but Jaime knew it was Brienne who stepped out the cottage door a few hours later. She did not acknowledge him, but ambled slowly off into the underbrush at the edge of the cottage clearing to relieve herself. He began to think she was gone too long and had just started to follow her when she returned to the clearing.

"I'll take the next watch," she said softly as she approached.

"You wouldn't even have the strength to scream if we were attacked," Jaime replied in a whisper.

"We'll see." She glared at him.

In the dim light, he was spellbound for a moment by the spark of her blue eyes. _Like the heart of a candle flame, those eyes. Pure, quiet, fierce enough to temper steel_.

He took a step toward her, but she didn't flinch. He leaned forward toward her ear until their cheeks were almost touching. He wanted to disconcert her.

"Never try to martyr yourself for me again," he said, lips close enough to her ear to feel her tiny flinch at his breath; intending to threaten, to intimidate her into keeping her distance. Then he ruined it, by turning his face toward her just a bit more, his nose nuzzling the soft skin in front of her ear just slightly.

Her sharp intake of breath preceded a shiver that vibrated through her and right into him. She didn't move, but he stepped back. _What the hell am I doing?_

"Go back to bed, Brienne," he said.

"I wouldn't have let them kill you," she whispered. Her eyes pleaded with him now.

"You have your squire back. Go to bed." He willed her to go. He was afraid to touch her now.

"Jaime, you are the only true friend I've ever known."

"Go. To. Bed."

"Forgive me."

His mouth twisted into a mocking grin as his chest filled with the seething betrayal he had no right to feel. "Why? You swore me no vows."

Brienne's chin dipped to her chest.

"You owe me no allegiance," he said.

She shook her head, and he thought it was a denial of his words, but he continued.

"I'd kill you in a thrice if it was that or a noose," he lied.

She looked sharply at him then. "I know your honor," she said, her hand slipping to caress Oathkeeper's hilt. "You trusted it to me. I broke faith with you, but I had no choice. I made a promise to you, Jaime; if you knew it or not."

"How can one break faith with an oathbreaker?"

"I _know_ your honor," she said again, clutching Oathkeeper now, her brow furrowed as she looked at him pleadingly again.

He felt his gut tighten for the second time that day from a second invisible blow, but the feeling made his blood quicken in his veins and he felt himself stirring.

"Go to bed, Brienne. Go, now. Or I'll break more vows this night."

She recoiled a bit and, with a sharp intake of breath, watched him warily-_-questioningly-_-out of the corner of her eye as she stepped past him and entered the cottage.

Jaime exhaled sharply and made a quick scan of the clearing before leaning back against the wall of the cottage. He would continue his watch.


	2. Refuge In Water

The small boat swayed as Jaime handed the oars over to Hunt. Carefully, he stepped over the sleeping boy and felt the bow dip dangerously as he settled himself next to Brienne. He grabbed the wineskin they'd tucked next to her head and fumbled it open with shaking fingers. Hunt glanced back over his shoulder at the sound, but said nothing.

After taking a quick sip for himself, Jaime slid his arm under Brienne's neck and lifted her up to drink. He thought her eyelids fluttered as he held the skin to her mouth, but the wine he poured fell on closed lips and ran down the sides of her face. Clumsily, he wiped her cheek with his sleeve.

Jaime sighed and took another drink himself. His stump throbbed with an intensity he hadn't felt since he'd first begun to wear his golden hand. The sticky blood he felt oozing around his wrist a reminder of the hours he'd spent trying to leverage the bloody thing to work the oars. Hunt was exhausted and the boy had rowed until he'd passed out-they'd nearly lost an oar when the little fool suddenly slumped over. Navigating the river at night was idiocy, but he was grateful Hunt had an idea where they might take the wench after she'd collapsed against a tree in a dead faint.

Brienne groaned, and Jaime lifted her head and held the skin to her lips once more. "Drink," he told her.

The sky had brightened just a bit in the East and he hoped the dawn would come quickly. He feared they'd miss the cursed Isle in the darkness. The water had grown rougher in the last hour and he had begun to smell salt in the air. Relying on Hunt to navigate rankled, the man showed no aptitude for the water.

After taking a short swallow, Brienne choked a bit and he lifted her head higher so she could cough. When he moved her too far, she let out another moan. "_No_," she gasped.

He could see her eyes were open now, her pale face grimacing as he tried to settle her into a more comfortable position. She sighed and calmed a bit when he nestled her head in the crook of his elbow. When her lashes drifted closed again he hoped she was asleep. Hunt had ceased rowing during the worst of her cries, but had resumed again. The boy still slept.

"_Jaime_," Brienne said weakly.

Jaime looked down at her; she was watching his face. "Sleep," he told her.

"End it," she said, her voice shallow and pale as her skin in the pre-dawn light.

"_Brienne_," he admonished, bringing his hand up to her forehead expecting to find fever. Her skin nearly burned him.

"Have mercy," she whispered, "will you leave me to suffer?"

Jaime dropped his hand from her forehead and cradled her ruined cheek, peering down at her, hoping she could see his face. "Yes," he ground out at her.

Brienne's eyes closed again; she released a long keening moan. "_Jaime_," she whispered, "_Jaime, please_."

Jaime looked up at Hyle Hunt, the man's shoulders were pumping as the oars churned through the water faster than ever. The boy was awake now, watching them.

Brienne's hand clutched weakly at his right wrist under her neck. In the dim light of near dawn it was clear she was crying.

Jaime wiped her tears with his left sleeve. "A woman's weapons, Brienne."

Brienne turned into his chest burying her face in his tunic, small sobs shaking her body. He held her firmly, hoping she wouldn't jostle herself into bleeding again. After a few moments she went limp and he was afraid she was gone, but he put his ear to her nose and could feel the faint wisps of her breath.

"There, ser," the boy said, sitting up a little straighter and pointing down river. Jaime turned and saw the island rising out of the water ahead of them.

When they reached the shore, Jaime and Hunt wrestled Brienne out of the boat while the boy ran ahead for help. Dawn broke as the men in cowls came rushing toward them. Wordlessly, they took her from Jaime's tenuous grip and he could only be grateful. A one-handed man had no business carrying anyone.

Hyle Hunt walked along side the one he'd called Elder Brother. Jaime heard scraps of their tense conversation as they were lead to a small cottage on the hillside. The brothers carried Brienne inside and laid her out on a low bed against the wall, then all filed out save the Elder Brother and one other.

"Leave us to tend her," the Elder Brother said.

Hunt and the boy turned to leave, but Jaime stepped forward. "She may wake. I'll stay."

The Elder Brother appraised Jaime for a moment and then nodded.

For what seemed like hours they worked. They fed her milk of the poppy, but still she wakened from time to time. Jaime helped where he could. He held her down while the men pulled out the boy's clumsy stitches and tried to clean away the putrid infection, while they sewed the muscle back together over her ribs to keep her guts on the inside-and then the skin back together over that. The sights and sounds of it reminded him of the sounds of butchery around the campfires after one of Robert Baratheon's hunts.

He wished he could walk outside and forget the sight of it, but instead he held her shoulders down and bid the men to hurry as he stared down at the bruise around her neck. _If she dies after all this_, he thought, _I'll slit the Elder Brother's throat_. When it was over at last and the Elder Brother said they must leave her to rest, Jaime simply sat beside her pallet on the dirt floor, the late afternoon sun blinding him for a moment as the brothers opened the door when they exited.

The boy came in and sat beside him.

Hunt followed, laid a hand on her brow and said, "She looks pale as death."

Jaime glared up at him until the knight left again.

He dozed for a time and wakened to find the boy stretched out and sleeping on the floor. Evening came and Brienne slept still, her breathing shallow. The Elder Brother returned to see to her, followed by two brothers with food for the lot of them. When Elder Brother tried to force him out with talk of marriage and proprieties, Jaime scoffed, "I could've had her a hundred times if I wanted. She's safe as a babe in her mother's arms with me."

The Elder Brother searched Jaime's face.

"I'm staying," Jaime said simply.

In the end they left Jaime with her. He and Hunt and the boy, the three of them her pitiful band of protectors.

The Elder Brother found him outside the next morning, leaning against the side of the cottage letting the cold wind off the water awaken him. Jaime scarce glanced at the other man, but it was clear he was intent on conversation.

"We've had word from King's Landing," Elder Brother said, pausing to stare out across the water as Jaime had been. "I assume you know the trouble which has befallen our queens."

_Cersei._ If Jaime had any doubt the Elder Brother knew his identity, it could now be put to rest. Hunt looked like a man with a big mouth.

"Trouble? You're a man of great understatement," Jaime said.

"Word has come that Ser Kevan Lannister is recalled to stand as Regent for the young king."

Jaime felt relief wash over him, freed from concern he hadn't known he carried. "My uncle is the best choice."

The Elder Brother gave him an assessing glance. "You have no ambition for the position?"

Jaime turned to look the brother squarely in the eye, resentful of his patronizing tone. "If I wanted the throne, I'd have had it long ago.

Elder Brother searched his face for a moment then nodded. "You can afford this delay then, knowing your king is well cared for and safe."

"A Lannister can always afford to pay his debts."

"So I have always heard."

Jaime turned his face away from the man, scanning the horizon. "Will she live?"

"Lady Brienne is perhaps the strongest woman I've ever known."

"Is that your way of saying she'll die?"

"I have offered prayers to the Crone, the Mother, and the Maid," Elder Brother said softly, noncommittally.

"And the Warrior?"

"Is the Warrior your god, then?"

Jaime shrugged. "Surely he's Brienne's."

"That gentle child? The Maiden, I think."

Jaime almost smiled at that, but bit it back. _And who are you to lecture me on the wench?_. His thoughts flew to Brienne and the way he'd felt the night after their fight, the way he'd inhaled the scent of her skin on a moonless night.

"I'm sure you know her better than I," Jaime said, carefully keeping his tone neutral.

The Elder Brother gave him a sharp look and with a bite to his words said, "I'm sure I don't."

Jaime met his glare for a moment, then the Elder Brother turned away and entered the cottage.

That night, Jaime sat beside Brienne as she was dying. Teeth chattering, head thrown back in pain, even the milk of the poppy couldn't ease her pain.

"Cold," she whispered. "Cold. _No, my lord_. No. Cold. _Cold._"

She dreamt of shadows now, he knew, cold shadows and Renly. It chilled him. _Father, please..._

The Elder Brother sat with them, mopping her brow with cool cloths. "It's the fever," he said, "it poisons the mind."

Jaime sat at the head of the bed looking down at her face. Her eyes opened occasionally. Sightlessly.

"Jaime," she said.

"Kingslayer," he whispered.

"She can't hear you," Hunt said from the foot of the bed. "She'll do that for days and never speak a word of sense."

"She calls for you, Ser," the boy said, seated in the far corner of the room. "You and her king, roses and her sword, and my lady. And then for you again. That's why the Brotherhood called her-."

"_Pod_," Hunt barked, silencing the boy.

_I heard what they called her._

"Likely she was still somewhat feverish from her bite," Elder Brother said. "It only wanted another wound to overtake her again."

"And I gave it to her," Jaime said wryly.

The room was silent, but for Brienne's panting breaths.

"Forgive me," she whispered. Her eyes were closed now, but he knew to whom she spoke, even if it was a fever dream.

"No," he said sharply, leaning close to her ear. "Leave this bed and keep your oath."

Her lashes fluttered. He sensed she was lucid. "_Jaime?_"

"You heard me, wench."

She seemed to settle then, and fell into a fitful sleep.

Before dawn, Elder Brother rose and stretched and began to gather his things. Jaime watched him silently, bracing for the worst. The boy had slept for hours and Hunt wakened from time to time. Other brothers had come and gone in the night, bringing food and bandages and herbs.

Elder Brother smoothed a hand across Brienne's forehead and smiled at Jaime. "Her fever has broken."

Jaime watched him carefully, wondering if he'd misheard. "I thought she would die."

Elder Brother stopped, his hand on the door, and looked back at Jaime. "Perhaps it was your prayer to the Warrior?"

"I did not pray," Jaime said.

"Ah. It must have been my prayers to the Mother.

"The Father," Jaime said softly, just as the brother was slipping outside.

Elder Brother paused and looked back at him and nodded slowly. "A bit of both, then."

Brienne slept for two days. Jaime let them bully him into a sleeping cell, and took his meals in the silence of the dining hall with the rest of them. It was on the third morning after Brienne had merely stared at him when he let himself in the cottage to find her sitting up on the bed cleaning Oathkeeper that he wandered toward the stables contemplating when he could leave the bloody place.

A brother big as Sandor Clegane was within brushing down a large black stallion. The man turned to glance at the intruder and even with the cowl, Jaime would have known him anywhere.

"I heard you'd turned craven, Clegane, but a septry?"

Sandor didn't answer, but turned back to the horse.

"They hid you from me, did they? Afraid I'd reclaim my sworn brother from his..._new_ sworn brothers? Or were they worried I'd execute you for the traitor you are?"

Clegane dropped the arm holding the brush and glared at him.

"Are you hiding the Stark girl here as well? Was she the cowled creature who served me porridge this morning?"

Sandor threw back his cowl, shot Jaime one last angry look and limped past Jaime and out the door.

"I've just seen Sandor Clegane," Jaime said, bursting into Brienne's cottage.

"What?" she asked, still sitting up in bed where he'd left her. Hunt and the boy were with her as well, seated at the small table.

"Sandor. He's here."

"He's dead," Brienne said. "Elder Brother-"

"Said The Hound is dead," said Elder Brother, entering the cottage with a hulking Sandor Clegane in tow. "Sandor Clegane is at rest, here among the brothers."

Jaime snorted.

"Arya Stark," Brienne said, eyeing Clegane. "Where is she? Is she dead?"

"Speak, Sandor," Elder Brother said.

"She rode off," Sandor said, pausing to clear his throat of disuse. "Doubt she's dead."

Jaime smiled. "That's very helpful, thank you Clegane. Likely not dead and could be anywhere."

"And Sansa Stark?" Brienne asked.

Clegane gave her a sharp look. "What of her?"

Elder Brother sighed. "Lady Brienne has sworn to find Lady Sansa. When she came before, she sought you for Lady Sansa's sake, not the younger Stark girl."

"I never had her," Clegane said.

Jaime glanced at Brienne. She stared unblinkingly at Sandor as though she actually understood what he meant.

"Yes, well, we don't want to overtire Lady Brienne," Elder Brother said, ushering Sandor out of the cottage.

When they'd gone, Hunt confronted Brienne. "You're not still chasing the girl."

"I swore a vow," she stubbornly replied.

"Have you learned nothing about your stupid vow?" Hunt asked. "You've survived despite it, but for how long? Marry me. We can sail for Tarth as soon as you're well enough."

_Well._

Brienne gave Hunt a withering look. "As soon as I'm well enough, I begin my search again."

Hunt shook his head at her exasperatedly and left. Podrick stood and followed him.

"You _have_ been busy," Jaime said, settling into the chair Hunt had vacated. "Your little journey has made a new woman out of you: you understand filthy allusions now, you've acquired a squire, you've acquired a _suitor_..."

"He's no suitor. He wants Tarth."

"And what if he accompanies you to Tarth to find your father has betrothed you again?"

Brienne gave him a startled look. "Ser Hyle is never accompanying me to Tarth. My father agreed never to attempt again. How do _you_ know I was betrothed?"

"Has no one taught you never to say 'never'?"

"Jaime, _how_?"

"Sansa Stark must be in the Vale."

She started a bit at the abrupt change of conversation, the nervous ferocity with which she'd been asking him about the betrothals dissipated a bit and she nodded slowly, looking down at her hands. "Before Lysa Arryn died she may have meant to go there, but surely once she heard..."

"If she went by water, she would have had time to reach the Eyrie before her aunt's death. Of course, Lysa Arryn was mad. She may have hidden Sansa away before she died. Or she may have refused to help the girl."

Brienne scrutinized his face. "Would she turn away her own blood? How well did you know the lady?"

Jaime grinned. "Well enough, or as well as I ever cared to. In my youth I was nearly betrothed to her. And then she slunk about the edges of court for years while her husband was Hand."

Brienne stared at him for a moment. "Is that why you joined the Kingsguard? To avoid a betrothal?"

"I've just told you where Sansa Stark must be, and you're asking me about Lysa Arryn? There's no great story to it. All fathers try to make matches for their children and, like yours, my father made a hash of it. Look what he did to your Sansa. And surely you've heard that before he had the inspired idea to marry her to Robert, my father made every attempt to claim Rhaegar for Cersei?"

"Is _that_ why you joined the Kingsguard?"

The wench had never asked him about Cersei. This was as close as she'd ever come. Suddenly the room seemed to shrink and the air felt too warm. Jaime felt his pulse jump like it was the first salvo of a swordfight. "Do you want to know the answer to that? After all, a man who'd violate his own sister-"

"I know it wasn't like that," she cut him off, blushing furiously and looking away from him. Not so much more world wise than she had been, then. "I know you would not...I know you must...I know how it must be between you-"

"_Do you?_"

Hyle Hunt burst back through the door then and pointed an angry finger at Brienne. "You're a damned fool, but I'll go with you. Someone with some sense should try to keep you from getting yourself killed."

The light shining around Hunt as he stood in the doorway was blocked for a moment. Sandor Clegane shoved the other man forward a bit and ducked in behind him. "I'll go with you. She will never trust any of you."

"And she'd trust you?" Jaime shot at Clegane.

"She'll know I'm not working for you or your sister."

"Why, Clegane," Jaime said. "If I didn't know better, I'd suspect you'd formed some sort of friendship with my sweet little good-sister. Did you often walk in the gardens together and trade girlish secrets about handsome knights and hem lengths?"

"No, but I did stand by and watch a time or two while Joff had Meryn Trant beat her."

Jaime bristled. "And did nothing to stop it."

Clegane's eyes brightened as he smirked. "I wasn't his father."

Jaime's sword hand itched and flexed and, for a moment, he thought it was back again. He smiled slowly at Clegane, fighting the urge to jump out of his chair. _Mustn't do that. The wench will tear all her stitches trying to defend me._

Brienne interrupted, "I'll go alone."

Three days later, Jaime watched as they loaded into the skiff to be taken across to the Saltpans. A ship had stopped, unaware there was no one left to trade with and Brienne had ignored the Elder Brother's advice and said she must leave. She had stopped arguing with Hunt and wasn't trying to convince the boy to stay with the brothers any longer. Clegane she eyed warily, but wasn't actively trying to stop him from joining them.

When Jaime made to step into the boat behind them, Brienne stiffened and looked at him questioningly.

"I'll see you off, Brienne."

She nodded and turned to look out over the water. A light snow had begun to fall as clouds blocked out the sun of an early winter's midday. The night before she'd asked his forgiveness again as she was leaving the hall after the evening meal, hesitating like a penitent child in the doorway.

"_Forgive me, Jaime,_" she'd said.

He had laughed and turned away from her, but thrown over his shoulder, "_For what, Brienne?_"

Now she sat beside him as the boat dipped in the current; tall and proud, pale and gaunt, still weakened from her illness. The shadows under her eyes leant an air of tragedy to her mien, blending her torn cheek and wide, expressive lips into a look that would have seemed waifish on a smaller woman. Could an ugly woman grow uglier? For days he'd been studying her face and couldn't decide.

She turned to him then, her eyes big and blue and full of liquid. "Forgive me," she said softly enough for him alone to hear.

"You can't have everything," he whispered.

A tear fell from her lashes as she turned away from him. He felt the drop fall like a stone dropped in his stomach. _I will be his champion,_ she had said. And then she'd have let him kill her. _Because she knew you couldn't save yourself, you poor crippled blind stupid fool...*_

When they reached the ship, she let the others board before her and turned back to him with a grimacing look of goodbye before she climbed the rope ladder.

Jaime turned to the Elder Brother who had ridden out with them. "Thank you for saving her."

"Did I save her?"

Jaime smiled and shrugged. And turned to follow her up the ladder.

*Tyrion XI, A Storm Of Swords, George R. R. Martin


	3. On Even Footing

Brienne leaned over the rail and, despite the twinge of pain from her wound, took a deep breath of the salty cold sea air. She was reminded of home and closed her eyes for a moment, lost in the memory of warm sunlight on her face as she stared out over the rich blue waters of Tarth. Her hand found her face and flitted over the torn flesh of her cheek. Would she ever see home again?

"Are you as much in need of fresh air as I am?"

She turned to see Jaime sauntering across the deck toward her. His hair ruffled in the breeze, his bearded jawline seemingly highlighted by sun that touched nothing else under the grey winter skies.

"Pod isn't a sailor," she said, turning back to look down over the rail again, hating the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach at the sight of Jaime. There was a distance between them she could not bridge and even the thought of it was nearly too much to bear.

"Nor is Hunt. I don't know if it's the stench of vomit or the rough waves, but Sandor has made himself scarce," Jaime said, stepping up beside her and resting his forearms on the rail as he leaned down next to her. "It must be so strange not to have been born on water."

She knew what he meant and nodded, wondering about his childhood on the Sunset Sea. Closing her eyes again, she could see the stretching waters of Shipbreaker Bay in her mind. Would the waters of their childhoods differ so greatly? She knew Evenfall Hall was tiny compared to Casterly Rock, and the Sunset Sea fearsomely large when compared to the Bay. Her life was so small in comparison to Jaime's.

The day before, when he'd climbed over the rail onto the deck of the ship, she'd been baffled and started to ask him if she'd forgotten something.

"Which bunk is mine?" he'd asked, never giving her the chance. And she hadn't said a word, afraid to break the spell which brought him aboard. Ser Hyle had grumbled and gone below with Jaime while The Hound simply watched them all, unblinking.

Even now, she could scarce believe Jaime was with her and couldn't bring herself to ask him why. She glanced over at him. _Why did you come with me? What of those who need you in the South?_

"When I was a child I always dreamt of crossing the Narrow Sea," she said, grasping for conversation. "I never made it east of Tarth."

"I sent Tyrion off over the Narrow Sea," Jaime said, squinting as he stared out over the rough water. "Well, that's where I meant to send him. He had his own ideas."

Brienne swallowed and didn't respond.

"I couldn't let them kill him," he said, with a bitter laugh. "I released him and he killed my father."

Taking a deep breath, Brienne looked out over the water, wondering what Jaime saw in the empty sea that made him speak of these things. She remembered Catelyn Stark's ruined head rolling from its rotted body and understood his need to speak of culpability no one else could ever understand.

Jaime continued, "I knew he was innocent. _I knew it._ And do you know what he told me when I released him from that black cell? My beloved little brother told me he did it, he told me he killed my son."

She nearly trembled with the weight of his confession. Even as she felt the pain of it, the burden he bore, a part of her wondered why he was telling her any of this. Had he forgiven her?

"He killed Joffrey," Jaime said, "but someone needed to kill him, and if anyone had reason, it was Tyrion. So I let him go. But then he killed my father, and..."

Brienne swallowed again, trying to imagine what would make a father say his child deserved to die.

"I wronged my little brother, you see," Jaime said softly, so softly Brienne leaned a bit closer, not certain she had heard him correctly. "He had something, once. The only thing he'd ever wanted. And I helped my father take it from him. My father took this thing from Tyrion so cleverly he never even knew what had been done, not until I confessed it to him when I released him from his prison.

"_I_ killed my father that night, surely as if I'd held that wretched crossbow myself."

Brienne felt her eyes grow wide in surprise and turned her face from him to hide her reaction-to hide her interest in what he would say next.

But Jaime was silent then. Regretful of his confession, or merely reflecting on it, she could not be sure. She chewed her lip and wondered if he expected her to respond.

"You would never touch a crossbow," she whispered.

Jaime chuckled at that. "That much is true. Kinslayer, Kingslayer, but at least I'd never touch a crossbow."

"Tarth is famous for its arrows."

He smiled, looked at her conspiratorially and whispered, "_I know._"

Her heart began to pound as she felt things ease between them. If he'd forgiven or temporarily forgotten, she didn't know. All she knew was that she would do anything to keep things like this between them.

"I can't remember my brother," she said, unsure if she should continue. "I have a vague impression of him in my mind perhaps, but no real memory. Yet if someone came to me today and told me I could save him, though I know him not, be he a good man or an evil one, I think I might do anything to let him live."

"And so you would absolve me of my sins," Jaime said, then he sighed. "Love of a brother is justification enough for the murder of a father? And if that brother had betrayed you just as you had betrayed him..."

"As I betrayed you."

He barked out a laugh and gave her a long look. "I forgot. You're the one who wants absolution. Everyone betrays me, Brienne, and you owe me less loyalty than any of the rest."

"Forgive me."

"I would, just to stop you moaning about it."

"_Jaime._"

He gave an exasperated shake of his head and looked out into the distance again. "You would have to wrong me before I could forgive you."

Again they reached this impasse. He said there was nothing to forgive, and yet she felt it between them again. She pushed down the memory of his face as they'd left Pennytree, of the utter confidence he'd had in her competence and her honor. _I handed you over to your enemies, Jaime,_ she thought. _I believed I could save all of you, but I took you to them and you can't forget it._

As they leaned against the rail side-by-side, she tried to remember a time when she wouldn't have cared if she led Jaime Lannister to his death, those early days when every moment in his presence was a trial, when the very sight of his smugly beautiful face filled her with loathing. But all she could remember was Jaime shouting "_Sapphires!_", and the thud of his feet landing in the bear pit. All she could recall was that when all hope had abandoned her, when she had known no rescue would come, Jaime had been there. She swallowed past the heavy lump in her throat and wished it could all be undone somehow.

Later that night, she left Pod alone in their small cabin and found Jaime on deck again. They shared a supper of stale bread and cheese, sitting with their backs against the ship's rail. Neither could stomach eating in the stench of their cabins and even the cold wind and spray off the waves was preferable to what awaited them below.

"They say Tyrion didn't consummate the marriage," Jaime said, as though he were commenting on the weather.

Brienne was grateful for the cover of darkness as she blushed. "You once told me he was chivalrous."

He have a low chuckle. "Did I? He can be."

"Perhaps he is not all bad."

Jaime snorted and said, "Not all bad, hmm? Or mayhaps Sansa Stark is simply more clever than anyone could guess."

Brienne bristled, memories of her terrified younger self finding the courage to defy Ser Humfrey Wagstaff springing to mind. But not all girls could wield a sword. "Even a clever maid can rarely expect such accommodation. Surely your own sister prayed her maidenhead would be spared the night she wed the king."

Jaime laughed again, but it had a sharp, brittle sound. "Do you think Cersei was a maid on her wedding day?"

Brienne felt herself blushing even more furiously, but she continued to stare at him, feeling defensive of all womankind. "Why did you let her go, then? If you were already..."

"If we were already...what? Fucking? I couldn't stop it. Life isn't a song, Brienne. I was already in the Kingsguard. And besides, she wouldn't have wanted me to interfere."

"How do you know? If you had gone to her and told her-"

Jaime wasn't laughing anymore. "Told her what? That I wanted to wed her as the Targaryens would have done? Or say if years later we'd been separated for over a year and she'd been widowed and when I returned I saw things so clearly that I begged her to marry me. What if, upon returning to King's Landing, I sought my sweet sister in the holy sept, and fucked her on the Mother's alter strewn with candles lit for our dead son whose body was on a bier beside us, and what if I told her I'd forsake my vows and tear the world apart to have her as my wife?"

He was angry and glaring at her, as though she'd played a part in it all. Her own anger had fled in the face of his pain and bitterness. "Is this why you have not returned to King's Landing? The Elder Brother told me the queen had been seized by the High Septon."

Jaime sighed and held his golden hand up before his face and examined it, twisting it left, then right. "She will find someone new to be her warrior. It will not be me."

Brienne searched his face, wondering how he could mean what he said, but wondering more how anyone could resist Jaime Lannister if he laid the world at their feet.

Just then, Sandor Clegane emerged from belowdecks. He spotted them and walked over to the rail beside Jaime. They both looked up at him from their seated position. It was a rare moment when anyone made Brienne feel small, but this man made her feel insignificant. It wasn't that he was so much taller, it was the hulking, angry presence of him that made her uneasy. If this was Sandor Clegane at peace, she shuddered to think what he had been like in torment.

"A sailor's just been telling me a tale, he says the Blackfish escaped your net," Clegane said to Jaime.

Jaime had a look of distaste. "So he did. Slippery old trout."

"The squire told me the outlaws heard you threatened to put Edmure Tully's wife in a trebuchet if he didn't surrender Riverrun."

Brienne held her breath and glanced at Jaime out of the corner of her eye. A muscle worked in his jaw, and he narrowed his gaze at some point across the deck. "His child," Jaime said. "It was his unborn babe I offered to send him in a trebuchet, once it was born."

Brienne felt chilled. Suddenly she could hear the mocking laughter of Jaime Lannister as she'd first known him. She knew if she closed her eyes she would find herself in the dungeons of Riverrun again, eyes wide as she tried not to eavesdrop through the door of Jaime's cell.

Clegane laughed. "And where is Edmure now?"

"I sent him to the Rock and told him if he behaved he could have his wife and child."

Brienne stared down at the crust of bread in her hand as The Hound grumbled something about seasick hedge knights to Jaime before he went back down to his cabin. Alone again, they sat silently in The cold as she tried not to think about what she'd just heard.

She looked over to see Jaime staring pensively across the deck, likely pondering Clegane's questions about the Blackfish.

"I should go see to Podrick," Brienne mumbled, rising to her feet and giving him one last backward glance.

Jaime simply sat and watched her go, his face devoid of expression. She didn't know what she expected.

In the cabin, she saw to the slop bucket and sat down next to Pod. His skin was damp and ghostly in the soft light of the lantern. The smell of sickness was not as bad as it had been. She suspected Pod had nothing left to give the sea. When she offered him a sip of water, the boy looked up at her briefly, then closed his eyes again in misery and whispered, "Ser..."

"Hush, Pod. Only one more day to Gulltown. You'll survive."

She doused the lantern and climbed onto the bunk above Pod, though it was made for a man a foot shorter than she. Cramped and miserable, her wound aching, she reached out to touch Oathkeeper where it was hanging from a rusty old nail driven into the bedpost. She tried not to imagine what Renly would have said if he'd heard someone threaten to load an infant into a trebuchet.

"_He had something, once. The only thing he'd ever wanted. And I helped my father take it from him_," Jaime had said.

"_I sought my sweet sister in the holy sept, and fucked her_..."

For a time she stared into the darkness, trying not to think of Jaime's face, but he filled her thoughts just the same. First the whisper of his breath in her ear as his nose grazed her skin. Then she saw his green eyes, cold and mocking and resigned as he gave her an almost imperceptible left-handed salute with his sword before they began their fight to the death. _A woman who betrays a friend has no fingers to point,_ she thought as she drifted off to sleep.

The next morning she lingered in her cabin, but finally had to seek fresh air. On deck, she saw Jaime deep in conversation with the captain as they stood at the rail of the ship's stern. She walked out to bow of the ship, standing before its weathered old bowsprit where the driving wind and cold mist off the waves washed away the stench of her cabin.

She was startled when The Hound stepped up next to her and spoke in his deep raspy voice. "You lost your master, girl?"

Brienne caught herself before she looked back over her shoulder at Jaime, and kept her spine straight. Again she wondered why it wasn't as pleasant as she'd always thought it would be to feel so much smaller than a man. "I have no master."

"No?" Clegane gave Oathkeeper's hilt a sharp glance where it was strapped around her waist. "That looks like a Lannister leash to me."

Reflexively, protectively, her fingers curled about the lion-headed hilt. _Kingslayer's whore._ "They say you wore a Lannister leash."

"Yes. My last leash was white and whipped about on my back in the breeze. It wasn't as pretty as yours, though."

"You slipped that leash easily enough," Brienne said, wishing she were better at matching wits. "As though it were nothing."

Clegane looked her up and down, the scarred side of his face somehow so much easier to bear than the implacable untouched side. With something like disdain he gave a small shake of his head, turned and walked away.

She felt like a weight lifted after he was gone. Turning her face back into the wind, she took a gulping breath.

"Clegane pleasant as usual?" Jaime asked from behind her.

She did not turn to look at him, but simply nodded.

"The Captain says we'll make port by sundown. I, for one, will be happy to sleep somewhere Hyle Hunt is not."

Brienne turned then to look at him. He was watching her very carefully, the lightness of his tone not matched by the concern on his face. Had he heard what the Hound said to her?

"Pod will be relieved," she said.

"Yes. We'll all be very relieved."

They docked as the sun set. Jaime told Clegane to keep a scarf about his face and his cowl on. Brienne had to hold Pod's arm to keep him upright once he tried to walk on solid ground. Ser Hyle made a great show of pretending he hadn't been as ill as poor Pod.

Jaime played the role of simple traveler, keeping his head down and the collar of his cloak turned up, and only shook his head when Ser Hyle suggested they present themselves to the Arryns of Gulltown for lodging. The innkeeper liked Jaime's coin well enough to find them three rooms when he'd claimed no vacancy, and had even procured them hot water for bathing.

Brienne convinced Pod to eat some watery stew as they huddled at a table in the corner of the crowded taproom. She tried not to notice the stares they garnered, especially as most of them were pointed her way. _Let them stare,_ she thought, fighting the urge to cover the bite on her cheek.

Jaime tried to act casual, but she noticed he kept his right arm concealed as he ate.

"You're all so conspicuous," Ser Hyle said, taking a bite of the mutton stew and glancing around the table at them all. "Even Pod, still dressed in red."

Jaime and Brienne both spared Podrick a glance.

"New clothes on the morrow, boy," Jaime said.

Podrick nodded apprehensively, as though he'd been asked to muck out the stables. The pretty tavern girl stopped to refill Jaime and Ser Hyle's tankards, glancing disdainfully at the watered ale Brienne, Pod, and Sandor Clegane drank.

"Anything else, Ser?" the girl asked Jaime with a saucy wink.

"What else is on offer?" Ser Hyle asked her with a wink of his own.

The tavern girl looked the hedge knight over and gave him a vaguely appreciative smile, though most of her attention was still on Jaime. "What would you like, then?"

Brienne looked down at the table, pretending not to notice any of it. The girl had already stared suspiciously at the scar when they entered the room.

"He's asking the price, girl," Sandor said with a growl.

The girl frowned at Clegane, glanced at his hooded face and his robes, muttered something about a septry and left in an offended huff.

Ser Hyle glared at Clegane, though he backed down a bit when the bigger man glared back.

"You were more fun when you drank, Sandor," Jaime said.

"Only a fool flirts with a whore," Clegane said.

"I only wanted to steal a kiss," Ser Hyle said, giving Brienne a sidelong glance. "She didn't look too deadly to allow it."

Jaime smiled too widely at Ser Hyle and in a far too unassuming voice said, "My brother told me a whore will never kiss you."

"A tavern wench will kiss you well enough," said Clegane. He turned his eyes on Jaime. "Though I can't say what the highborn breed of whores you've known will or won't do."

Clegane and Jaime stared daggers at one another, and Brienne feared they may come to blows. She had never forgotten Jaime's viciousness at a perceived slight to his sister.

"Ser-My lady...don't feel well."

They all turned to look at Podrick who had swayed against the wall. Sandor stood and grabbed Pod's shoulder, hauling the boy up. "I'll take him upstairs," he said, then smirked at Ser Hyle, "but he sleeps with you."

"Can we trust The Hound?" Ser Hyle asked when they had gone.

"Can we trust _you_?" Jaime responded, taking a long drink of his ale.

Ser Hyle leaned back on the bench until he rested against the wall, assuming a pose of easy confidence. "When did we become _we_?"

"_We_ never weren't _we_," Jaime said, gesturing between Brienne and himself. "These are _our_ oaths. I'm not certain where _you_ come into it at all."

Anxiety already making her weary, Brienne stared back and forth between them. "Ser Hyle has been helpful," she said.

"Yes, I see how helpful he's been," Jaime said. Then he gave Hyle a hard look. "I've known Sandor Clegane since he was no older than Podrick. He's not one for scheming. If he decides he wants to kill us, we'll know."

"He bears you no love," Ser Hyle told Jaime, glaring at him.

Jaime only smiled and returned the glare. "The tavern wench liked me well enough. I'll console myself with that."

Brienne watched the two men stare at one another. She leaned her elbows on the table, exasperatedly dropping her head into her hands.

"Yes," Ser Hyle said, "don't let us stop you from seeking the wench. You'll want to be consoled."

"Alas, I've sworn a vow. She is yours, Ser Hyle. If she'll have you."

"I have sworn no vows, it's true" Hyle said. "But I will seek comfort elsewhere. Vows are not for tavern girls."

"Brienne," Jaime said, rising abruptly. "Would you care for some air?"

She watched Jaime leave the table and walk toward the door and found herself following before she realized what she was doing. Ser Hyle caught her eye and gave her a wry smile as she left him to his ale.

It was snowing thick, coin sized flakes when Brienne stepped into the inn yard. Jaime never turned back to see if she followed as he led her toward the stables. Oathkeeper was like a leaden weight dragging at her hip. _That looks like a Lannister leash to me..._

At the door of the stable she waited as he'd bid her, until he emerged with two tourney swords. He led her behind the stables and past a row of houses to a small wooded area.

"We must be mindful of your stitches, but we'll both need to flex our sword arms if we're going out amongst the Hill Tribes," he said, handing her a blunted steel sword after she left Oathkeeper hanging from a bare branch.

Jaime came at her with none of the caution he'd shown before Thoros and Lady Catelyn. She'd known he had been training with his left hand when they'd fought that day, and now she saw the concentration he'd managed to hide behind his bravado. Her wound stung as she met his first blow, but she did not think it would open. She knew he would accept nothing less than her full effort.

They danced for a moment or two as Jaime tried to find an opening, but as soon as she parried two-handed, even weakened as she was, Brienne was able to thump the blunted tip of her sword against his heart.

Jaime sighed, stepped back to regroup, and said, "Again."

He was better than he had any right to be with his off hand, but he was still little better than average. They fought for what felt like hours and she landed more than a dozen killing blows, but Jaime got her in the end, bending low as he swept her legs out from under her with a punishing kick, knocking her flat on her back and bringing his sword to rest against her neck.

"Never forget," he said, "I'll forsake honor to win."

Brienne looked up the length of the sword at him, his golden curls were wet with snow and pasted to his grinning, bearded, impossibly handsome face. In a blink, she grabbed his ankle and pulled with a violence that made her wound burn. She felt and heard Jaime fall beside her, the wind knocked out of him with a grunt.

"I haven't forgotten," she said, and lay back to look up with squinted eyes into the white flakes falling from the black sky.

Sprawled beside her, Jaime gave a pained chuckle. Then the laughter died and he whispered, "I had a siege to end."

_...a trebuchet..._

"I'm not a lackwit, Jaime. I know."

She closed her eyes for a moment and saw Lady Catelyn's head again, as Jaime cleaved it from her body. _I was only relieved,_ she remembered. Jaime had done the thing she couldn't.

"Forgive me, Brienne."

She found herself biting back a laugh and turned her head away, lest look her way and he see it. "You can't have everything," she said.

He laughed long and hard at that, but she had her lips set in a firm line when she stood and offered him her hand. He came up off the ground with a wince, but he met her with a clear gaze that warmed her despite the snow. She almost asked him to forgive _her_ again, but knew she should leave it unsaid. Somehow the matter was done.

They trudged back to the inn and up the two flights of stairs to the rooms Jaime had taken. In front of her, on the top step, Jaime paused and threw softly back over his shoulder, "I'll have bruises in the morning, wench, but it was worth it."

Then Jaime had stepped away and slipped open the door of the room he was sharing with The Hound. Brienne was puzzled until she reached the top step to find Ser Hyle, arms crossed, leaning against the door jamb of his own room staring at Jaime's back as it disappeared behind the closing door.

Hyle gave her a long suspicious look up and down, taking in the muck clinging to her back from when she'd lain on the forest floor. "Swordplay?" he asked.

Brienne knew Jaime wouldn't want anyone to know, so she simply ducked her head and entered her own room without answering.


	4. Open Old Wounds

"A moment," Brienne gasped out, clutching her side where she'd fallen in the snow.

Jaime dropped his sword and watched her, tempted to crouch and ask if she was all right, but suspecting she would take it as an insult.

The night air was cold and still and the howl of wolves in the distance lent an eerie cast to the small clearing they'd found to spar in. In a fortnight, they would need to be wary of the Mountain clans and their late night dueling would have to come to an end.

Brienne struggled to her feet, unused to fighting in the boiled leather and heavy wool garments he had insisted on before they left Gulltown. He could still recall her stubborn scowl when he told her she would freeze if she didn't listen to him. "Your childhood winters in Tarth were tame things compared to what you will find in the mountains," he had told her.

He didn't like fighting in the extra clothing anymore than she did, but he remembered enough winters to know he hated being cold even more.

"Enough for tonight, my lady," he said, seeing her wince as she tried to lift her sword.

She looked up sharply at him. "I can continue."

He only shook his head and started to walk back to the campfire and the others. Each night she tested him, giving him more than he could handle. She was much better than Ser Ilyn, stronger, if lacking his precision, and she was younger, faster, and determined Jaime should be battered into becoming better-though she never actually spoke her intent. _Still trying to save me..._

They'd given up trying to hide their nightly activities after the first night out of Gulltown when they'd returned to the fire and Clegane had looked up and said, "Is she fucking you, Lannister? Or are you fucking her? From the sound of it, it's hard to say."

Now Sandor looked up at their approach, a faintly mocking cast to the look he gave Jaime's sweat matted hair and Brienne's grimacing attempt to sit without jostling her wound. Jaime wanted to ask Sandor how well he thought he could fight with a lame leg, but knew it wasn't as difficult to overcome as losing a sword hand. Besides, Sandor would likely challenge him to see who was better, and Jaime knew how that would end.

"How will you ride tomorrow?" Hunt asked Brienne, who was slumped before the campfire doing a poor job of pretending she wasn't in pain.

"Same as I ride every day," she said through clenched teeth.

"Has the wound opened?" Jaime asked, sitting down opposite her, the sleeping boy next to him stirring for a moment.

She shook her head no, but he wondered how she could be sure.

"This is no time for swordplay," Hunt grumbled. He gave Brienne a glare. "You shouldn't even be out of your sickbed."

"I'm well enough," Brienne said.

Hunt glared at Jaime then, but all Jaime could do was shrug.

The next morning Brienne was barely able to mount her horse and Jaime felt a pang of remorse. As the hours of the morning wore on, he and Hunt exchanged glances several times when Brienne was too pained even to converse. When they reached a small village not long after midday, Jaime suggested they stay and take rooms in the inn for the night.

Jaime nudged Brienne up the stairs to one of the two small attic rooms the innkeeper had given them. "Let me see that wound", he said, "it may need a new stitch or two."

"And you'll stitch it one handed?" Hunt asked from behind him. "Let me see to her."

"I'll see to it myself," Brienne said, entering the room before either of them could do anything but stare at the closed door.

Jaime and Hunt went downstairs to eat and found Sandor and Pod at the table nearest the fire.

"Done playing nursemaid?" Sandor asked them as they sat.

Hunt said nothing, just got up and went back up the stairs. Jaime let him go and sat at the table next to Pod.

"You should let him have her," Sandor said from inside the shadows of his cowl. "It's like watching a prince fight a peasant boy for a moldy crust of bread."

Podrick looked carefully from Sandor to Jaime and back again.

Jaime sighed and looked away. He didn't know why Hunt bothered him so much. In truth, the wench could do worse. Red Ronnet Connington's vile face came to mind.

A few minutes later, Hunt and Brienne joined them. Jaime didn't look at either very closely and didn't ask Brienne how she was feeling. The inn's taproom filled as the day wore into night and Jaime kept an ear to the chatter in the room.

Baelish was as unpopular here as he had been in Gulltown, but Jaime had assumed he would be. Here and there he heard snatches of talk about the queens and their trials. Margaery had supporters even in the Vale. Cersei had enemies everywhere; the loud man at the next table referred to her only as "that whore".

The second time the man said it, Brienne looked up at Jaime from across the table. Jaime smiled reassuringly at her. _I know when to keep my mouth shut, Brienne,_ he thought. But he itched to hit the man as he imagined Cersei's face, as he'd last seen it, treacherous and disdainful and more radiant than sunlight.

_I love you. I love you. I love you._

Sandor and Hunt were arguing about Targaryen loyalty in The Reach, Podrick was lightly kicking the table leg in a steady rhythm, and the oaf at the next table had just called Cersei a "brotherfucker".

Jaime stood abruptly and left the room. Days ago, Brienne had asked him why he hadn't returned to Cersei. _Because she never loved me,_ he'd wanted to say, knowing it was the truth. And now, he'd left his beautiful sister to her enemies. Even if he took a horse and left that minute, he could never reach her in time. Whatever she had done, her voice still echoed in his head and he still felt the ghost of her touch in the night.

He burst out the door into the cold air just as the last light of day was dying in the east. Rounding the corner of the inn, he had every intention of trying to ruin his sword against a tree, Tyrion's mocking voice about to break into its usual litany in his head when he was seized from behind.

Jaime tried to knock back into his assailant's nose with his head, but the man was shorter than he. As cold steel slid to rest against his throat, he threw each of his elbows back in succession. The gut blows landed, but the man kept his grip and pulled Jaime backward with him to the ground. The dagger at his throat drew blood.

"Keep it up boy," the man said, "and this will end even sooner than I intended."

Jaime knew that voice. He couldn't resist a low chuckle.

"Blackfish."

The blade tightened against his flesh and he felt the blood run down his collar and under his clothes, though the cut was shy of life-ending. Beneath him, the Blackfish whispered, "Before I end you, Kingslayer, tell me-"

The sound of a sword being drawn stopped the man cold. Jaime looked up and saw Brienne calmly pointing the red and black rippling blade of Oathkeeper at them.

"Release him," she said, "and I will allow you to live."

"I can guess who you are, woman," Tully spat. "Did he purchase your loyalty with gold, or did he win it between your legs? How quickly after you left Riverrun did you betray your oath to my niece?"

"I never betrayed my oath to Lady Catelyn," Brienne replied, "but you have my solemn vow, if you hurt Ser Jaime, your life's blood will mingle with his on the ground."

The Blackfish laughed. "You're welcome to try, girl. Now, Kingslayer, tell me what you know of Sansa Stark and I'll give you a clean death."

"We know no more than you," Jaime told him, staring up into the steel of Brienne's eyes. "My guess is that she went to Lysa."

"And you mean to bring her to justice for the death of that abomination you put on the throne?"

"I mean to get her somewhere safe before my sister can find her."

Tully scoffed, then Jaime felt the other man stiffen and take in a sharp breath.

"You are surrounded," Brienne said, in a deadly quiet voice. "Drop the dagger and you have my word you will remain unharmed."

"_Your word_, what is that worth?"

"If you die, what will become of Sansa Stark? Do you imagine Edmure will escape the Rock and save her?" Jaime asked, feeling the dagger bite again.

Then the dagger fell from Jaime's throat and he rolled away to see that Brienne's bluff had been spectacular. It was Pod who had snuck up behind Tully and held a sword to his throat.

"Podrick Payne," Jaime said, "I have misjudged you."

Brienne had moved in and shoved her own sword to Tully's neck as Pod backed away.

Jaime stood and clapped a hand to the wound on his neck. "Let him go."

Brienne shot him an incredulous look, but Jaime just raised an eyebrow. She pulled her sword back and the Blackfish stared up at them. _Treason,_ he thought, _this is treason against my own son._

Of course, it had all been treason: when he'd released Tyrion, when he'd sent Brienne after Sansa, when the Elder Brother had offered to send a raven to King's Landing and he'd refused, when he'd set sail for Gulltown rather than ride south to his duty. He looked up and caught Brienne's eye and he knew she could read his thoughts.

"I seek the girl," Jaime said, recalling Catelyn's undead face as he stared down at the Blackfish. "For her mother's sake. I won't see her harmed, and if you can keep her safe you can take her wherever you think best, so long as you don't hand her over to Stannis."

It was a calculated risk. Bolton held the North and he doubted the Blackfish could change that in the middle of winter, even with the Stark girl. And she was still married to Tyrion, which would make even the staunchest Stark loyalist sour.

"Join us if you wish," Jaime said. The older man stared up at him, sneering. Jaime simply shrugged and turned to Pod and Brienne. "It's cold out here, let's go inside."

Jaime turned and walked away, wondering if he'd wake in the night to again find the Blackfish's dagger at his throat. As he entered the inn, he dug in his pocket and flipped a copper out to the boy. "You've done a man's work tonight, Pod. Go buy a cup of ale."

Pod nodded and looked as pleased as Jaime had ever seen him as he went to join Hunt and Sandor who were staring at the three of them.

Brienne took him upstairs and laid him out on her bed. A serving boy brought boiled wine and bandages, needle and thread. She grimaced as she sat on the bed beside him, adjusting her position until her wound no longer pained her. Then she tended to his cut with silent efficiency, sleeves rolled up for her work; her fingers were so gentle they were almost a caress as she kept nudging his chin up when he would try to look at her.

"It would wound the pride of a lesser man to be so regularly saved from certain death like a helpless maid," he said.

She gave him an irritated sigh and smoothed her fingers over his throat. "Don't talk."

"Why won't you marry Hunt?"

Brienne's eyes looked at the floor for a moment, then slid back to his wound. A faint blush crept up her throat and fanned around the wide scar on her cheek and toward the frontier of her hairline, under the wisps of straw that had escaped her haphazard attempts to pin them at the base of her neck. Her freckles were more faint than when he'd first known her, casualties of the loss of the summer sun, but he saw them better now, thrown into light brown contrast against her pink skin as her blush deepened.

"Every time you talk I have to start over," she said, pressing some linen to his wound to stop the fresh bleeding.

"You must have known him when you were with Renly, if he was Tarly's man."

"I knew him," she said softly, concentrating on threading the needle.

"And you hated him," he whispered.

She gave him a sharp look and brandished the needle, but couldn't hold his gaze. Somehow, she turned even redder.

"No," she said softly, trying hard to concentrate as she pulled through a stitch. "I liked him."

He watched her as she pulled another stitch. "How is it my secrets spill like an overfull goblet of wine whenever I see your face, yet I learn more of you from strangers than from your own lips?"

She snapped the thread, giving the last stitch a deliberately hard yank that made him gasp in pain. None too gently, she began to wind a bandage around his neck. Her eyes were watery when she finally met his gaze, but the blush had receded.

"There was a wager," she said. "Ser Hyle and some of the others were _bored_ and sought a way to pass the time before Renly began his campaign."

She stood and put the bandages and needle on a small side table. Jaime sat up against the rough headboard of the small bed, watching her closely. For a moment, she looked as though she would walk out the door, but instead, she sat at the foot of the bed, wincing as she arranged herself carefully to rest her back against the wall.

"Before this," she began, pausing to gesture to her scar, "when I was only ugly, my father's inability to find me a husband was legendary in the Stormlands. When the men of the Reach joined the Stormlords under Renly's banner, the legend grew and spread."

"Brienne the Beauty," Jaime said, watching as her eyes flicked closed when he said it. The serving boy had lit a fire in the small hearth before he left, but Jaime felt too warm suddenly. Brienne was beyond embarrassed. It pained her-_tormented her_-to speak of this, he could see, yet he wanted to bathe in the thick poison of her tale. _Don't stop now, wench, I want more._

"Brienne the Beauty," she confirmed with a subtle sarcasm he'd rarely heard from her. "A wager was begun. A gold dragon was the fee for every entrant, the purse to go to the man who claimed my maidenhead. And so, I was beset with suitors. They brought me gifts and sang me songs. Where before men had only laughed at my sword, suddenly I had sparring partners. At meals, they would fight to sit beside me. I could not understand why men would suddenly want my company, for I had grown no fairer and my tongue no more witty."

She paused then and ran her fingers over the rough wooden rail across the foot of the bed. Her forearm, still exposed where her sleeve was turned up, was long and sinewed with muscle as thick as his own; her arms were unlike those of any woman he'd ever known and he tried to imagine how it must have been for her in Renly's camp. But instead he found himself watching her long fingers as they traced almost delicate designs into the wood grain.

"Randyll Tarly heard about the wager, not long after one of the men tried to steal a kiss to force the issue. He put a stop to it, he told me, though he considered the fault my own for living in the camp among fighting men."

She swallowed hard, and seemed to have to force herself to look at him. "That is why I will not marry Ser Hyle. I will not marry at all. Any hope that lingered of such a life was cast aside when Renly fastened that cloak about my shoulders."

Then her shame made her blush again and she stood quickly, her wound obviously giving her pain.

"Renly is dead," Jaime said as she neared the door. If he thought that would stop her from leaving, he was wrong, for she barely glanced over her shoulder before exiting the room.

He found her seated at the table with the rest of them in the inn's main room. The Blackfish sat alone at a corner table and from beneath his cowl, Sandor gestured at the older man with his eyes, asking Jaime for details. Jaime merely shrugged.

Brienne sat next to Sandor, spine straight, jaw clenched as though she were bracing herself for a blow. Jaime sat next to Hunt, across from her, and simply watched her face.

Podrick was nursing his ale, watching the Blackfish with wary eyes.

"Renly would have trounced Stannis," Hunt said softly in what was clearly a continuing argument.

"The _Tyrells_ would have trounced Stannis," Sandor responded in a quiet rasp.

Jaime glanced around the room. It was full of people and their conversation was thankfully drowned by that of the rest of the crowd.

"I think you're overestimating Stannis because he had you on your heels at the Blackwater," Hunt said.

"I think you're overestimating Renly because you liked the taste of his cock," Sandor replied.

Hunt merely smirked with derision, but Brienne was reaching for her sword. Jaime hopped up and around the table, sat beside her, and thumped his golden hand firmly down on her thigh to keep her seated.

Sandor glanced at her as though she were a buzzing insect. "What do you care? They say you killed him."

"Oh gods, not that," Jaime spat at Sandor.

Brienne was spoiling for a fight after he had badgered her about Hunt upstairs, Jaime could see that now. Picked raw and festering, Brienne the Beauty needed nothing so blatant as the excuse Sandor was giving her to come to blows. As she stood, Sandor stood as well and they were chest to chest. She looked like the girl she was when toe to toe with Clegane. Jaime couldn't get between them, but he slid his arm around Brienne's waist and pulled. Over her shoulder he made Clegane meet his gaze.

"Touch her," Jaime told him, "and I will burn you alive."

Sandor actually snarled at him. Jaime felt Brienne reaching between herself and Clegane for Oathkeeper's hilt, but luckily Hunt stood, reached across the table, and clamped his hand over it to keep it firmly in its scabbard.

With strength he hadn't been sure he'd regained since the Whispering Wood, Jaime put his other arm around Brienne's waist and yanked her back from Sandor Clegane. She fought him, but he had the momentum, and he intentionally ground the heel of his hand into her wound.

"_He will kill you,_" Jaime hissed in her ear.

Any hope he'd had of reaching the Gates of the Moon without ravens flying to tell Baelish they were coming was gone. The whole of the taproom watched with quiet awe as Jaime wrestled Brienne toward the stairs. The Blackfish smugly raised his tankard to toast them as Jaime dragged the muttering wench around and forced her up first one stair and then the next.

With his body pressed tightly to hers, he somehow got her up the stairs, even with only one hand. But there was a price to pay for the close press of her backside every time he used the whole of his weight to nudge her up another step. By the time he closed the door of her room behind them, she was shaking with rage and if she'd noticed how hard he was, she didn't say anything.

Jaime was on edge and panting and so was she as she turned to try to wrestle him away from where he'd plastered his back to the door. He was at the end of his strength, certain now it was only her injury and sheer desperation that had allowed him to win the fight. When she pressed herself against him while trying to pull him off the door, he moved his hips to the side so she wouldn't feel his arousal.

"Enough," he growled.

That seemed to reach her and she rested her forehead against the door for a breath or two, pressed against him like a second skin, before she pushed back and her eyes focused on the bandage at his neck. She reached up to touch it and he flinched at the feel of her suddenly gentle fingertips running along his jaw.

Pulling back a step, she looked at him questioningly, then reached for the bandage again, slowly this time, as though she were approaching a wounded animal. He wondered if she understood about the lust that followed a battle, wondered if it was the same for women, then he thought of how he had learned to deal with a violent Cersei and that only made it worse.

He almost groaned as Brienne brushed the sensitive skin of his throat while she unwound his bandage, and when she gave him a mystified look from the corner of her eye, he knew she hadn't noticed the state he was in and didn't understand a bloody thing.

"You're bleeding," she said, leaning close to examine the stitches. She turned and went to retrieve the supplies she'd left on the side table earlier.

Bleeding, Jaime slipped back out the door, went down the stairs and outside into the night.

"I love you. I love you. I love you."  
...Jaime VII, A Feast For Crows, George R. R. Martin


	5. Face In Shadow

Brienne helped Ser Hyle pull branches off the dead pine tree they'd found just as the sun was setting. It seemed they couldn't gather enough firewood now that they'd reached the mountains where the wind whipped through the small passes and made the flames of the campfire dance and eat their fuel quickly. The threat of attack from the Mountain clans was also greater, and no one dared venture away from camp alone.

"The Blackfish says we will reach the Gates of the Moon in two days' time," Ser Hyle said as he shook dead needles from a pine branch.

Ser Brynden, who had followed them at a distance for a fortnight, never deigning to ride with them or share their camp, had suddenly appeared at their campfire two nights earlier.

"I pray that we find Lady Sansa at the Gates of the Moon," she told Ser Hyle as she broke loose another dead branch.

"And if we do?" Ser Hyle asked.

Brienne sighed. "There is her sister."

Ser Hyle snorted derisively. "You have far less chance of finding that one. Besides, to hear the Hound tell it, she manages well enough on her own."

"She is only a girl, traveling alone-"

"_You_ were only a girl traveling alone."

"I have never been that sort of girl."

"My lady," Ser Hyle said, pausing to lay a hand on her shoulder, "there is only one sort of girl."

She shook off his hand, sensing where this conversation would lead. "No, there is only one sort of man."

Though she could barely see his face, she knew Ser Hyle was smiling. "You're an expert on men, now," he said.

"I think I've learned enough."

"You have a great deal more to learn," he said. "Learn it from me. Take me south with you, for surely if we find the girl you will go home to Tarth. Present me to your father; see if he approves."

Brienne gave her own derisive snort at that. "I may go south, but I have other business to settle before I return home."

"You will follow _him_," Ser Hyle said softly.

She had been thinking of Stannis, but Ser Hyle's remark gave her pause. There was no question which "him" he meant.

"What if I did?" she asked with equal softness.

Ser Hyle drew a deep breath. "You will not hear me, for you will think I only say it to win you."

"Hear what?"

"I knew you at Bitterbridge, my lady," he said. "You have changed, grown a bit more guarded, but I saw how you served Renly."

Brienne's pulse began to quicken and she knew she would not like to hear what he had to say. "I served him, _faithfully_..."

"Yes, and you loved him."

"Yes, I loved him-"

"No, not as one loves their liege lord. You were a maid who had given her heart to a man." Ser Hyle stepped closer and she could see the exasperation on his face. "You could not hide it."

She swallowed a bitter lump in her throat, remembering how she wept the night Renly wed. But she had long ago relinquished the girlish dreams that brought such pain.

"I held no delusions," she said, though it was difficult to form the words.

"No," he said, "nor do you now, I think. And yet you would throw your life away again. Can you not see that Renly enjoyed having you stand at his side, like..._like some strange pet_ from a foreign shore? And now, again..."

_That looks like a Lannister leash to me._

Ser Hyle's words about Renly hurt, but the other implication felt like the tearing of Biter's teeth into her flesh. It felt like being eaten alive.

_Kingslayer's whore._

"I am his friend," she said, "as he is mine. I know this, and nothing will make me doubt it."

"You should not doubt it," Ser Hyle said, and laughed softly, "I have the bruises to prove it. But such a man has a hundred friends."

_You are wrong_, she thought, even as his words gnawed at her.

_Did he purchase your loyalty with gold, or did he win it between your legs?_

"He saved my life and he saved my honor, both more than once," she said.

"As you have done for him. But he would not shape his life to yours. Make your own life, my lady. You deserve better than Renly would have given you. You deserve better than to live your life in service to anyone, no matter how you love them."

"Are you not asking service of me, Ser?" Brienne asked sharply, standing at her full height. "Is that not what a wife must give her husband?"

"Ah, but a husband gives in return, my lady. A secure life and a home, children, warmth on the coldest of nights."

"I need no husband," she said. "I will not wed."

Ser Hyle laughed and turned back to grab another branch. "As you say, my lady."

They talked no more as they gathered their bundles of sticks and walked through the snow back to the campfire to find Ser Brynden and Pod watching one another warily across the flames.

Jaime and Sandor had gone off to spar and had not yet returned.

"It's not sparring, it's beating," Jaime had whispered several nights before as he gingerly laid himself out before the fire beside her. Brienne had been amused as she watched him through the slim opening she'd left for her eyes when she'd wrapped her woolen scarf around her face. "Laugh all you want, wench, the man isn't human."

Jaime had refused to let her practice with him anymore, even though she scarce felt her wound now. First he'd tried to practice with Ser Hyle, but that lasted only two nights, then Jaime had finally convinced Clegane to spar with him.

"Come, _squire_," Clegane had taken to saying every evening after they had eaten. And Jaime would ruefully smile and follow the hulking man into the darkness.

Brienne and Ser Hyle dropped their bundles beside the fire and sat down to warm themselves. Ser Brynden was silent as usual. He'd hardly spoken since the first night he'd joined them, save when he questioned Jaime about his proposed strategy with Lord Baelish. Later Jaime told her he thought Ser Brynden was there for Robert Arryn as much as for Sansa. She misliked the air of intrigue that had begun to hang over their journey, for she had no stomach for such games.

When Jaime and Sandor returned, Jaime gave Brienne a mischievous look. She moved aside so he could join her next to the fire and he didn't sit tenderly like one recently battered.

"Did you best him?" Brienne asked softly, sparing a glance at Sandor who looked a bit more thunderous than usual.

Jaime raised his eyebrows at her and one corner of his mouth pulled up ever so slightly. The boyish glee he was trying to hide made Brienne feel breathless and she had to turn away from him for fear she might weep at the ache of it. She caught Ser Hyle's gaze and saw the almost sorrowful pity in his eyes.

_Is it written on my face?_ she wondered. Then she happened to catch Ser Brynden's eye and she thought she read pity there too. _A man who would like to see me dead, and even he thinks me a pathetic creature,_ she thought.

She was on her feet suddenly, stumbling toward the forest. Though she tried to mutter something about being only a moment, she wasn't certain any words had come out of her mouth. When she was sure she was far enough away, she leaned against a tree trunk and let the tears come.

The next night, they rode into a small garrisoned town one day's ride from the Gates of the Moon. Ser Brynden would not join them, for Jaime intended to ride in under the pretext of searching for the fugitive Brynden Tully.

"Half the lords of the Vale would gladly take my head off my shoulders," Jaime had said that morning, "so who knows if this will work. Only fear of the crown may keep them in line."

"Half? Make no mistake, Kingslayer," Ser Brynden had said, "every one of the lords of the Vale would gladly take your head."

Jaime had only smiled his knowing grin and given Ser Brynden a bow.

Brienne had expected to be watched carefully when they entered the town's inn, but it was the attention paid to Jaime that caught her curiosity, that and the lack of conversation; the talk in the taproom was low, peppered with suspicious glances darted their way.

It was Ser Hyle, who had lingered in the stables talking to the groomsmen, who brought them the news. He came in and sat heavily at the table, even Pod and Sandor looked at him oddly.

"My lord," Ser Hyle said to Jaime. Brienne almost told Ser Hyle he was taking the show of deference to Jaime too far, but then she read the reluctance in the hedge knight's eyes.

"My lord," Ser Hyle began again, more softly this time. "It is the queen regent."

Brienne watched as Jaime's hand stilled where it had been reaching for his tankard of ale.

"Yes?" Jaime asked, his voice frighteningly soft as he stared intently at Ser Hyle.

"The queen regent has confessed to the crime of fornication with a member of the Kingsguard and his brothers-the Kettleblacks. And with Lancel Lannister."

"What have they done to her?" Jaime asked, his gaze cool and clear as he stared at Ser Hyle.

Ser Hyle blinked and glanced down at the table, then back at Jaime. "She was stripped and shorn bald, then made to walk barefoot and unclothed from the Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep. There she awaits her trial."

Jaime looked up sharply at that. "There will still be a trial?"

"She remains accused for King Robert and the High Septon's deaths. And still she is accused of instigating the charges against Queen Margaery...and she remains accused of incest and treasonous adultery."

Brienne watched as Jaime's pride turned his face to stone. "Thank you, Ser Hyle," Jaime said, downing the rest of his ale in one gulp. "Please excuse me."

Brienne watched as Jaime stood and left, walking straight and proud with all the arrogance of a prince. She heard his heavy steps up the staircase of the inn.

Ser Hyle sighed. "I wasn't finished."

"What more could there be?" Sandor asked.

Ser Hyle called the innkeep over and asked for a round of ale for the table. He waited until they were served and had all taken a drink, even Pod with his eyes wide with curiosity.

"The Princess Myrcella," Ser Hyle began, "has been maimed in Dorne by a certain Ser Gerold Dayne. Ser Arys Oakheart was slain defending her."

"Maimed?" Brienne asked. "How? Why?"

Ser Hyle grimaced. "They say she has lost her ear and part of her face. No reason but madness has been given."

Brienne took a long swallow of her ale. "I will go and tell him."

Shaking his head, Ser Hyle laid his hand on her arm. "There is more. There are reports of mercenaries landing in the Stormlands, the Golden Company they say, led by Jon Connington. It is said that he brings Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar, with him."

"Bugger that," Sandor said. "My brother killed Aegon Targaryen."

"It is rumored he lives," Ser Hyle said.

"Where in the Stormlands?" Brienne asked. "Where have they landed?"

Ser Hyle let out a heavy sigh. "Cape Wrath, Estermont, the Stepstones, it is said they besiege Storm's End."

"And Tarth?" she asked.

"Tarth as well," Ser Hyle answered. "There is no word of your father."

Brienne felt the blood pound in her head and all through her veins. She stood, forcing the spectre of her father's face from her mind, for she could not begin to face it or she would shatter. "I must tell Jaime."

"Let Hunt do it, girl," Sandor said. "Finish your ale."

But Brienne was already walking toward the stairs. Each footfall up each step seemed to whisper to her: _Tarth, Evenfall, Tarth, Evenfall..._

She knocked on Jaime's door and received no answer. "Jaime?" she asked with her cheek pressed to the wood of the doorframe.

"Leave me," he said through the door.

"No, Jaime, there is more..."

The door cracked open. It was dark within, there was no fire, no candle was lit. Brienne stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

Jaime stood before the diamond paned window, his shoulder leaned against the frame looking out into the winter night. She could see him in shadowed profile, tense and angry.

"What more?" he asked.

And she told him. All of it. All of it but Tarth.

When she was finished, Jaime covered his eyes with his hand. "Myrcella," he said. "Doran takes his revenge on my child."

"That is not certain, this Dayne-"

"It was Ned Stark who killed Arthur Dayne; Brandon or Ned fathered Ashara's babe, depending who you believe. What vengeance would they seek against a Lannister? And Elia's child supposedly returned from the dead? Doran is in this. It reeks of him and his bloody dead brother."

"Jaime-"

"And here I am, in the heart of the Vale, a thousand leagues from either of my children. I have abandoned my family and my duty."

"You could not have known. You have come for a matter of honor. To fulfill your vow-there is no dishonor in that."

He turned to her then, but she could see nothing of his face in the dark. "To fulfill a vow. Is that why I am here?"

"Yes..."

"And Cersei has confessed. Tyrion told me about Cersei and Lancel. And Kettleblack-well, one of them. I had it from my cousin's own lips that he fucked her. She was _lonely_ while I was gone."

"Jaime, is that why you would not return-"

"You heard me say it, I know you did, for I know you heard the rest. How many other lovers have I taken?"

"None," she whispered.

"None."

"She was recently widowed-"

Jaime hissed. "I was only gone a year."

"She bore your children, she loves you."

"You've grown a new tolerance for monsters. Once, you could not even speak it without loathing."

"I do not...I know you love her as she must love you-"

"You defend her. _You._ Tell me, Brienne, you're a woman, can you go a full year without taking a lover?"

She felt herself begin to blush and blessed the darkness. She thought of her father's many mistresses. "I am not like other women."

"No."

"I face no temptation, I mean. I saw the queen once, in the Red Keep. She was so beautiful... Every day men must throw themselves at her feet, it may be too much to resist."

He laughed then, cold and bitter. "It's not too much to resist. _I_ have resisted."

"She loves you."

"You are so certain."

"How could she not love you?"

"If she stood where you are and made a plea on her own behalf with a tenth the passion you expend arguing for her, I could forgive her anything."

"Forgive her. It hurts to wound you, Jaime. She could not have meant to do so."

"This again."

"Jaime-"

"She wrote me, she asked me to help her, she begged for my help."

"When?"

"At Riverrun. I burned the note. I did not reply. I did not go."

"She will understand."

"Instead I followed you."

"Not for much longer."

"No."

"Forgive me first, Jaime, before you return to her. Please."

"I _have_ forgiven you, Brienne."

"Then what is this between us? Why must you make me talk about Ser Hyle? If not to punish me, why?"

"I don't know. Why do you punish me? Why couldn't you just leave me as you found me?"

"I will leave you now."

"Good," he said, turning back to look out the window.

Brienne was angry and heartsick and she nearly left then, but something made her turn back. "You are new to this, but I know what it is, Jaime, to love without hope of return. It is a bitter, endless sea that will drown you if you do not find a handhold. Don't slip into this despair when you could reach for her, when you could claim some part of her to hold as your own, some small slip of hope to buoy you and keep your head above the waves."

Then she slipped out the door, shaking, wishing she and Jaime were both in the south were they should be, rather than chasing the phantom of Sansa Stark.

Brienne descended the stairs to the inn's main room slowly. Each step more difficult than the last. She thought of Jaime lashing out in pain, she thought of Ser Hyle's hand on her arm as he said, "there is more", she thought of her father standing alone on the battlements of Evenfall-no, she could not, she _must_ not-think of her father.

When she sat again with the others, the silence was heavy. She finished the ale Ser Hyle had purchased her and when he quietly handed her another and then another, she drank those as well. Her fingers began to feel warm and heavy, and her eyes seemed a beat too slow to focus, but the ale did nothing to dull her pain.

Ser Hyle and Pod went upstairs to bed and she noticed Sandor Clegane had been drinking tankards of ale right along with her. Like she and Pod, he had only accepted watered wine and ale before this. She noticed that his cowl had slipped back from his face and that the last few patrons in the room were exiting one by one, warily watching him as he had begun to snarl into the liquid in his cup before each sip. Soon she was alone with him and the innkeep came to the table with four more cups of ale and left them while murmuring excuses about going to bed himself.

Brienne reached for one of the new tankards and sloshed some ale onto her wrist.

"You ever had this much ale, girl?" Sandor asked.

"No," she replied, and took a sip.

"Good time to start," he said.

"Jaime said you must have given up strong drink," she said.

His lip curled mockingly on the good side of his face. "_Jaime said_..."

Brienne looked sharply at him. "You must still have some love for the Lannisters if this evening's news has driven you into a cup of ale."

Sandor snorted. "Bugger the Lannisters. I hope they all rot."

"You're the sort of man who simply cannot resist the temptation of strong drink, then?" she asked, feeling angry, feeling like fighting.

"Sometimes a man drinks to face the sunrise, and the sound of a little bird singing. You'll learn that soon enough when your master turns you loose to fend for yourself," Sandor said, the scarred side of his face a gentler prospect than the unscarred. "You'll learn it when you find your island in tatters."

"You should never have left the Quiet Isle," she said.

Sandor tipped his cup at her with a sneer. "There we agree."

"Why did you leave the Isle and the Elder Brother's influence, then? Do you owe some service to Sansa Stark? Or to her family? Or to her husband?"

The laugh that followed her questions was low and dangerous. "Why are you here, girl? Hunt says you keep faith with Catelyn Stark, but that dumbstruck look on your face every time Lannister's in the room says he's the one you serve."

For some reason, Brienne's hands flew to her face, feeling it to see where the truth was hiding in plain sight, but then her fingertips slipped over her scar, as they always did. She pretended to simply wipe the tiredness from her eyes, but her hands were clumsy from the drink and Sandor was watching too closely. "Do not look at my face if it offends you," she said harshly.

"Learn, girl, and learn well," he said, drawing his finger along the angry ridgeline that wove its way down his face dividing the clean from the marked, "your face is all anyone can see. They'll pretend to look away, but when they think you're not looking they'll be staring again. Your days of walking easily among the beautiful are done. They were done the day some man decided to make a meal of your face."

"Do you think I ever walked among the beautiful?"

"You were never one of them, I can see that," Sandor said solemnly. "But you walked among them well enough or you'd have learned by now not wear your lovesickness on your face."

Brienne swallowed hard and felt a blush rising up her face, and a panic rising up her throat. She found herself forgetting for a moment that this man was an enemy with no kindness in him.

"Does _he_ see it?" she asked in a whisper, for she had to know, though she found herself hoping against hope that this thing everyone else saw remained hidden from just one pair of eyes. "Does he laugh with the rest of you?"

"That one? He'd see it if you looked eager for the feel of his cock, that's a look he knows well enough," Sandor said, pausing to take a sip of his ale, his face suddenly contemplative. "But the way you look, as though he's the one who makes the sun rise? What does he know of that look? He's never seen it directed his way."

Brienne pushed herself to her feet, turning away from what she suspected was pity-_pity_-on the face of Sandor Clegane. She went up to her room, stepping around Pod's sleeping form curled before the dying fire and falling into her bed. The drink made her feel a bit ill, and she curled up under the blankets feeling as though she were going to vomit.

She pushed all thoughts of Sandor Clegane and the Lannisters, Ser Hyle and Ser Brynden, Catelyn Stark and Sansa Stark, and Oathkeeper and _him_ from her mind. And all that remained was Tarth; Tarth and her father's stoic, resigned face the morning she'd said goodbye and sailed for Storm's End.

The next morning, Brienne was in pain, but was careful not to show it. Her head hurt and her stomach recoiled at the idea of food. She left the inn and made straight for the stables while the others broke their fast. Jaime followed a few minutes later, appearing at her shoulder to help her strap her pack to her horse's saddle.

"You might have told me about Tarth," he said.

She shrugged and turned away from him to Pod's horse, to secure the boy's pack. "It must wait until we reach the Gates of the Moon," she said, holding very still for a moment as a wave of nausea swept over her.

Jaime sighed. "Your father will have acted sensibly. I'm sure there was no bloodshed."

She was careful not to look at him, uncertain how to keep her face from revealing what she wanted to keep hidden.

"I cannot turn my thoughts to it now, or I will break," she said, glancing at him just long enough to see his sympathetic nod.

"I understand," he said quietly, and left her.

That day they pushed hard for they knew they neared their destination. Occasionally as they rode, Ser Brynden showed himself in the trees beside them, the last glimpse of him was as the Giant's Lance began to loom ever larger above them.

"He was the Knight of the Gate for years and will have spent a great deal of time here as well," Jaime said when he saw Brienne craning her neck trying to keep track of Ser Brynden. "He'll be close enough to help-or cause trouble."

As night fell, the snow began. The conversation had been sparse during the last day of their journey and their party was silent as they traveled the last miles in darkness.

Even through the swirling snow, a faint glow could be seen when they reached the castle. Pinpricks of light from tower windows seemed to materialize before them as they rode up to the raised drawbridge and its gatehouse.

"Who goes there?" a voice called down.

Even in the dark, Brienne could see the flicker of hesitancy on Jaime's faced as Ser Hyle announced them as they'd planned.

"Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard," Ser Hyle announced, with enough authority that Brienne suspected he'd played the same role for Randyll Tarly.

A laugh resounded from the gatehouse, joined by a second voice and a third. Brienne grabbed for Oathkeeper's hilt.

"You are a lackwit, you should have chosen your jape more wisely, for the Lord Commander would not be fool enough to venture here."

"Yet here I am," Jaime called out in the crispest, most deadly commanding voice Brienne had ever heard him use. "And I would have the name of the man who calls me fool."

The authority with which Jaime spoke saw the men in the gatehouse send for permission and then quickly lowering the bridge and opening the gate.

As they entered the castle yard, Brienne felt a hundred eyes on them. In doorways and through windows, she saw shadowed faces watching their entrance with thinly disguised curiosity.

Some men came walking toward them as they dismounted and Brienne moved close to Jaime's side as Pod followed closely behind Ser Hyle as she'd instructed earlier.

"Lord Commander?" asked a large, gruff looking bearded man.

"Lord Nestor Royce, is it?" Jaime asked with the slightest nod, oozing Lannister entitlement and absolute authority.

The man looked unhappy, but nodded. "I will take you to the Lord Protector."

"By all means," Jaime said, jerking his head for the rest of them to follow, his eyes stuttering just briefly as they met Brienne's. _He doesn't trust me to carry off this deception,_ she thought.

They were lead to a ground floor solar in which a man waited.

"Lord Commander," the man said. He was far shorter than Jaime and dark haired with a sharp beard on his chin.

"Lord Baelish," Jaime responded, giving the man a brief nod before walking over to warm himself by the fire.

Jaime glanced at where the door was open and Lord Nestor and some other men milled about.

"Lord Nestor," said Baelish, "if you would come in and close the door so we may speak candidly with the Lord Commander?"

When the door was closed, Jaime said, "My thanks."

"Imagine my astonishment to find you here in the Vale, my lord," Baelish said. Then he spared a glance at Brienne, his gaze latching onto her scar. "It was rumored you disappeared in the Riverlands with a woman..."

"Ah yes," Jaime said, gesturing to Brienne, "Lady Brienne, the Maid of Tarth. And her liege man, Ser Hyle Hunt. Of course, you know Clegane."

Ser Hyle had given an annoyed exhale at his introduction.

Sandor pushed back his cowl at the sound of his own name, then quickly pulled it back up to shade his face again.

Petyr Baelish's eyes flared at the sight of Sandor. "Ah, many rumors I've heard have been...incorrect, then."

Jaime said, "I seek the Blackfish."

"Surely you don't think I would hide him here, I am King Tommen's loyal man," Baelish said.

"It's your help I need," Jaime said. "To ferret out which of the Vale lords would hide him."

Baelish and Lord Nestor both seemed to relax at that. "Any help you need, my lord," Baelish said, "though I confess I am surprised to see you here, so far from King's Landing at such a time-"

Jaime pounded his fist against the mantle and roared, "The man escaped me-_ME!_ And thinks to plot continued rebellion against the King whilst I am a laughingstock. I may have lost my hand, but I have not lost my wits!"

Petyr Baelish smiled knowingly and Brienne thought the man believed every word of Jaime's charade. It made her wonder what Jaime had truly been like before she knew him that made this so easily believable.

"Of course, my lord," Baelish said, "this slight must not go unpunished, we will help you run the Blackfish to ground. But first, you must rest, I think. Lord Nestor has ordered rooms prepared for you-"

"Go to no great trouble, my men can use the rooms in my apartment."

"Yes, and the lady-"

"She will feel most comfortable near her man-at-arms," Jaime said.

"I see," Baelish said. "Well, we will have it seen to. Lord Nestor, if you could? And Lady Brienne, my natural daughter will show you to the bathing house."

Brienne straightened her shoulders, readying herself for the stares of other women. She noticed Sandor pulling his cowl fully forward to cast his face in shadow. _Your days of walking easily among the beautiful are done,_ he'd told her.

They left Baelish and Lord Nestor in the room. In the hall, servants came to take the men and Pod, and a tall, slender black haired girl stepped barely out of the shadows, her long hair hanging half over her face, and gestured toward Brienne, darting a cautious glance at Jaime, before quickly turning to walk away.

Before Brienne could follow her, she saw both Jaime and Sandor give the girl sharp, almost imperceptible glances. But it was Pod, who nearly moved to speak to her before Sandor clamped a hand on his shoulder and turned him away, that made Brienne understand. With one last questioning glance at them, Brienne turned to follow Sansa Stark down the hallway.


	6. Buried In Snow

Jaime could still smell snow in the air, though his rooms in the Gates of the Moon were warm and dry. Podrick was asleep before the four of them had a chance to gather quietly in front of the hearth in Jaime's bedchamber. They stood close and kept their voices low, for Jaime knew Baelish had ears in the walls.

"The gall of the man," Jaime whispered into the small circle of Sandor, Hyle, Brienne, and himself. "To keep Sansa in plain sight. It's lucky he thinks we're fools and doesn't know Pod was Tyrion's squire."

"Arrogance," Sandor said. "He has no fears here."

Jaime glanced over at Brienne, who had said nothing. Her hair was wet still from her bath, hanging over her shoulders in snarled damp tresses she occasionally patted with a towel. Her jaw was set stubbornly, but other than a sharp denial when he asked if she'd spoken to Sansa, she had not participated in the conversation at all. He knew he'd been cruel to her the night before, but her sullen refusal to even look him full in the face was growing tiresome. She might have told him about her bloody island rather than let him drone on about Cersei and his own troubles.

He hadn't even told them how Lord Nestor had pulled him aside to ask if Brienne was the woman accused of killing Renly, along with killing Nestor's cousin Ser Robar Royce. That last, at least, was a crime he could easily lay at Loras Tyrell's feet. He'd told Nestor that Stannis was to blame for Renly, though he hadn't said how.

"Maybe Lady Sansa's safe enough here," Hunt said. "Maybe we ought to leave well enough alone."

"You don't understand," Jaime said, "Baelish is hiding her from the crown, he's hiding her from Cersei, yet he's almost daring me to find her. Something is not right here. And guest right will mean nothing to him. He means to kill me or keep me, I cannot guess which."

"Couldn't he just be a decent sort, hiding his dead wife's niece?" Hunt asked.

"Decent sort," Clegane snorted. "Littlefinger keeps brothels, that'll clean the decent out of any man. Not to mention he helped put Ned Stark's head on a spike. Keep your dagger to hand."

Jaime thought of the girl Bolton's bastard had married, the one who was not the real Arya Stark. Baelish had a hand in that, and he also happened to be harboring the only known Stark heir. He wished the Blackfish was there to offer some insight. Or perhaps he didn't. Who knew what the Blackfish's game was? Whatever it was, it likely involved removing Littlefinger as Lord Protector and Jaime wasn't certain that was wise, even if the whole situation smelled rotten. Could the Tyrells be in league with Baelish? Or Doran Martell? Surely not Stannis? _And I thought Petyr Baelish could be Tommen's Hand,_ he remembered ruefully. _Baelish had my father cozened as well._

"We'll have to watch carefully on the morrow," Jaime whispered. "The Blackfish said he would find me, though I can't guess how."

Sandor and Hyle left to go to the room next door where Pod was already sleeping, and Brienne slowly walked toward the small adjoining room she'd been given. It was more a closet than a room, really, and he wondered exactly what impression Baelish had drawn from Jaime's attempt to keep Brienne near enough that he could keep her safe. _Is it you keeping her safe, cripple? Or is it the other way around?_

"Brienne," he called softly before she could exit the room.

She paused and turned reluctantly back to him. Her hair was a mess and he noticed she made little attempt to keep it out of her face. Her eyes were cast down and his gaze was drawn from her eyes down to her neck where she had not fully laced the linen undertunic she wore. The scar the noose had left around her neck was still a light red, like a forgotten necklace haphazardly clinging high about her throat. _There's a keepsake of the safety I give her._

"I'm tired, Jaime," she said, not looking at him, shuffling her feet. There was something endearing about it that made him long to tell her all would be well. _I'm sorry, my lady, but we are likely doomed._ He found himself moving toward her.

"You're anxious to go south," he whispered, stepping near her, chest to chest. Ever mindful of the listeners in the walls, he brushed his cheek against hers, his lips near her ear, as he had once before on a moonless night. _Best not think of that._ And if there were eyes in the walls? How would this conversation whispered ear to ear look? Would Baelish actually believe they were lovers? The idea made him want to laugh.

Then she sighed and he felt the hot rush of her breath on his ear, and there was no thought of laughter at all.

"My father did not understand my need to follow Renly," she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear, even when they were this close. "He allowed it, but it wasn't what he wanted. I sent him a raven when Renly named me to his Kingsguard, but he did not reply. And after that, the accusation that I killed Renly must have reached him. I know he would not have believed it, but the shame... He has had no word of me but horrid rumors, save whatever Vargo Hoat told him while I was at Harrenhal. And now, he may be gone and I may die in this place, and I have not even had the courage to write him."

"I wrote him," Jaime told her, willing himself not to inhale the freshly bathed scent of her as his nosed brushed the damp hair clinging to her face, willing himself not to slide his hand across her waist and grip her hip as their bodies pressed together. "I wrote him after we reached King's Landing. I told him of your exploits while serving Lady Catelyn and delivering me back to my king. I didn't mention that Loras Tyrell had you locked in a tower cell at the time, but I knew that would all be resolved."

Her sigh was soft and long and full of both heartache and relief. He felt her fingers faintly trail along his chest, barely touching the fabric of his tunic before she dropped her hand again.

"Thank you," she whispered.

They stood like that for a moment after she was done talking, and he began to think he was a man who could not have any contact with women, even ugly ones, if he was to keep his vows, when she whirled suddenly away and the thought left him. It was as she walked toward her little room this time that he caught her gaze darting to the small silvered hand mirror that hung on a nail next to the door. Her eyes flicked to it, watching her reflection, and he saw her shake her hair further forward on her face.

_The first she's seen of the scar,_ he realized.

Jaime thought of Myrcella, somewhere between Dorne and King's Landing, far from her mother or brother, scarred and frightened, likely in pain, and perhaps equally unsettled by a glance in a mirror. He felt sick over all of it and cursed himself for whatever impulse made him want to follow the wench on this ridiculous quest. _You follow her because she thinks you're a man of honor,_ the voice in his head mocked. _Because she's the only living being who thinks well of you._

"Brienne," he called before she closed the door behind her. "Leave the door open, I may have need of you."

She finally met his gaze at that, her blue eyes narrowed and pensive. He wanted the door open so he could hear if anyone crept into her room to do her harm. But he also knew it meant Baelish would hear of it and think she was his lover, though that was as likely to do her harm as good. _And you want to listen to her breathe as you have when you slept beside her under the open skies,_ he mocked himself.

Whatever she thought his reason, Brienne nodded briefly and left the door open wide as he heard her remove her boots and climb into bed.

He got into bed himself, but knew Brienne did not sleep. He kept his dagger under his pillow and his sword slung over his bedpost near his head. He wondered how quickly he could reach her door if they were attacked.

The open door made him think of the nights he'd stood posted outside Cersei's chamber in the Red Keep. He would sometimes crack open her door and reassure himself just listening to her breathing within. Some nights, Cersei would creep to the door, slip her hand out and pull him inside. He thought of her golden body limned in firelight and tried to imagine how she'd survived her walk from the Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep. She had doubtless endured it like the queen she was, head held high, too radiant to be mocked. But he remembered the laughter of the Bloody Mummers and his hand hanging from a tether about his neck and knew anyone could be mocked.

As he drifted to sleep, he wondered how often his beautiful sister had pulled Kettleblack into her room when the man stood outside her door.

Jaime dreamed that night that he stood guard outside Cersei's door again, but when it opened and she reached for him, his right hand rose to meet hers and he gently pushed her delicate fingers back inside, then quietly pulled the door closed again.

When day broke the snow was still falling and Jaime rose from his fitful slumber and stumbled to Brienne's doorway, needing to be sure she was well before he closed the door so he could dress. He found her wide awake, fully dressed and cleaning Oathkeeper. She looked at him quietly then went back to her task.

Servants brought food, and after they'd all broken their fast, Jaime had suggested that they find the practice yard, thinking it was a fitting excuse for why they were all armed to the teeth. As they stepped out into the courtyard and the falling snow, Jaime realized they would not be leaving the Gates of the Moon for days, even if Baelish would allow it. In the places where the servants hadn't cleared paths, the snow had already reached his knees and it showed no sign of stopping.

Petyr Baelish seemed to materialize at his side and Jaime cast the man an annoyed glance, still playing the entitled Lord Commander with no respect for the former Master of Coin.

"Lord Baelish," Jaime said, "excellent timing. You can lead us to the practice yard for we're all weary of travel and eager for swordplay."

"Yes, of course, my lord, but if I may have a word once we've reached the yard?" Baelish asked, his voice too thick with obsequiousness for Jaime not to be alarmed. _It chafes at the man to play the part of a lesser lordling now,_ Jaime realized, fighting his urge to glance at Brienne, fighting his rising sense of panic at their predicament.

At the practice yard, Jaime let Littlefinger lead him off to a corner of the yard against the back of the stables where a small alleyway was hidden between the stables and a tower wall.

"Ill tidings from the south, my lord," Baelish said.

"What now, is my sister accused of fucking Moon Boy?" Jaime asked, trying to sound bored and irritated. "The High Septon would do well to remember how to address his betters, and will when I return."

"Ah, my lord," Baelish said, "it is not our beloved queen regent, but Ser Kevan Lannister to whom I refer."

Fear shot cold and fast down Jaime's spine as he feigned a yawn. "What of mine uncle? Was he foolish enough to bring his wife to court? Has she embarrassed us all?"

"Ser Kevan has been murdered," Littlefinger said. "Shot with a crossbow and then stabbed. Along with Grand Maester Pycelle, I fear. There are apparently whispers in the capitol that your brother played a hand in it, for it is eerily similar to Lord Tywin's death."

"And what do your whisperers say?" Jaime asked, suddenly unable to feign anything.

"Ah, my lord, I am so far removed from King's Landing now, I fear I know only what the maester's ravens tell me."

_I doubt that,_ Jaime thought, his heart racing as he thought of Cersei and Tommen alone amongst the Roses.

"I must return as soon as possible," Jaime said, trying to recall the game he played. Trying to entice Baelish with something that would allow him to extricate his ragged band of compatriots from the tangled mess he'd unthinkingly led them into. "We will have need of a good man on the council, have you any ambition to be Hand of the King?"

"I am flattered my lord, truly, but Lord Mace Tyrell has been named Regent for King Tommen, and he has named Lord Emmon Frey as Hand."

A sot to Lord Walder and Bolton through him, their allegiance bought away from the Lannisters as easily as it had been purchased by Tywin. His father had made pacts with the faithless and now he and Cersei were left to deal with the aftermath. _Mace either believes me dead or means to make me so,_ Jaime thought.

And by naming his Aunt Genna's husband as Hand, Tyrell was extending a hand of peace to the other Lannisters as well, Jaime realized. "I'm glad I didn't have to sit through the squabble on the small council to reach that decision. Still, I must return, I suppose," Jaime said, trying to pretend he'd only been told his favorite horse had come up lame and not that the danger shadowing his family loomed larger and darker than ever. "What rotten business. Have you any ideas about where the Blackfish may be?"

Baelish could barely disguise his amusement that Jaime could be so easily distracted, that the last standing Lannister so clearly misunderstood the catastrophe awaiting him in King's Landing. _Continue to think me a fool, Littlefinger, it is the only weapon remaining to me_, Jaime thought.

"I had not forgotten your hunt, my lord," said Baelish. "I thought you could question Ser Harrold Hardyng who has only this sennight joined us from the household of Lady Anya Waynwood."

"Excellent, excellent. Eh, I confess I am in no great hurry to mourn another relative. Funerals are so tiresome. First Joffrey, then my father, now this..."

"A sorry turn of events, but doubtless all will be well once you return," Baelish said with a smile, as he turned to walk down the narrow passage behind them. Then Jaime noticed the man turn back and say, "Oh, and my deepest condolences, my lord."

"Yes, yes," Jaime said as he walked away.

Hunt had Pod hitting a straw man with a wooden sword and Sandor, hooded, was watching two squires duel. Jaime stopped next to Brienne who gave him a searching glance as he walked over.

"What is it?" she asked softly without looking his way.

"They've killed my uncle and Mace Tyrell has declared himself regent," he said, watching the fight and pretending he merely commented on the swordplay.

"Oh, Jaime."

"Don't. Watch the sword fight. Don't look at me."

"What can we do? In this snow..." Brienne trailed off, trying to look disinterested and failing miserably.

"Littlefinger won't let us leave alive anyway," he whispered so only she could hear. "He just needs to find a way to deal with us that won't give the lords of the Vale an excuse to oust him-oh _gods_, Brienne, stop looking at me. Watch the fight!"

The wench looked as though her heart was breaking for him. She also looked like she wanted to commit murder for him. He'd been a fool to think she could participate in the subterfuge, but he was almost beyond the point of caring.

The fight ended and the winner sauntered over to Jaime. "I wondered if you would do me the honor, my lord?" the young man asked, with arrogance his skill didn't merit.

"My swordplay is less than elegant without my sword hand," Jaime replied, knowing he needed to distract Brienne. "The lady does my fighting for me. She will give you a good duel, Ser...?"

"Ser Harrold. Ser Harrold Hardyng," the young knight replied, as though the name carried some weight. Baelish had mentioned him, Jaime remembered. "But, though I'm sure the lady amuses herself at swordplay, I am a knight as you see and I must refuse for it would be unsporting-"

Jaime gave the boy a knowing smile. "I insist. Brienne?"

Brienne gave him a resentful look as though he had asked her to juggle for a crowd. He merely shrugged and held out his hand as she unstrapped Oathkeeper from her waist and shoved it at him.

She stretched as she chose a blunted blade and squared off against Ser Harrold. The boy opened easily with a few hard swings, his blows easily met by Brienne. But she was clever and let the blows sink her blocks a bit more than they needed to. The boy began to grin, thinking he was stronger than she. _When did you learn to toy with a man, Brienne?_

Brienne allowed Ser Harrold to push her about the yard, let him wear himself out, as was her wont, her own breathing fierce but strong as the boy's began to sound strained. Her icy blue eyes were riveted on her opponent, missing nothing. Finally, she countered a clumsy wide open attack with a sharp and deadly strike that sent Ser Harrold's sword flying when he tried to block it. The boy looked shocked and sputtered as Brienne's sword went to his throat, her eyes cold as the steel she pressed to Ser Harrold's skin.

She gave her opponent a disrespectful nod before she walked back toward Jaime, never noticing that every man in the yard watched her. Jaime felt her triumph as though it was his own, recalling the feel of walking away from a win as though it had taken no more effort than opening his eyes in the morning. Then she looked up and met his gaze as she advanced. She looked murderous, she looked like fury.

Jaime gave her a small smile and took in the way the falling snow clung to the battle wild straw of her hair, the way the cold painted a deep red on her lips, the smoldering flame of her enraged blue eyes, and was unable to fight the thought that it made her look like someone had just fucked her against a stable wall. _Someone?_

He pulled his gaze from hers and gave Oathkeeper back to her. She angrily strapped it around her waist.

"Well done, my lady," said a voice from behind them.

Jaime turned to see a very short man with orange-red hair.

"Ser Shadrich," Brienne said.

"You remember me, then?" Ser Shadrich asked. "Still looking for your maid of three-and-ten?"

Jaime watched as Brienne stiffened, still trying to catch her breath from the fight, and said, "I seek Ser Brynden Tully now."

"Well, I hope you find him," Ser Shadrich said, giving Brienne a nod before he walked away.

"What was that?" Jaime whispered sharply to Brienne, catching Sandor's eye and motioning him over.

"He seeks Sansa, for bounty. I met him in the Riverlands," Brienne said in a whispered hiss as her breathing evened.

Jaime watched as this Ser Shadrich fell into step with two other armed knights after they'd conferred briefly. The three men stalked off in the direction of Baelish's solar. If Ser Shadrich told Baelish that Brienne had been searching for Sansa, they were lost.

"Baelish went over by the stables," Jaime told Sandor and Brienne, trying to fight his rising panic. "I'll get Hunt, you go through that small alleyway in the corner and see if you can find him-and keep this Shadrich away from him."

Shaking her head, Brienne said, "Ser Shadrich hunts her too, why would he-"

"Baelish must own him, now go."

Brienne set off, with Sandor trailing after her with his slight limp. Jaime managed to catch Hunt's eye and they followed after the other two while Pod continued to hit his straw man.

Ahead of him, Jaime saw Brienne reach the alleyway and enter it, then mere moments later, she exited again and he saw her grab Oathkeeper's hilt as though she would draw it, then abruptly turn away, eyes wide. Jaime and Hunt reached her at the same time as Sandor.

"Baelish, I heard him whisper," Brienne hissed to them, jerking her head toward the alleyway. "I heard a noise behind a doorway in the alley, I thought I heard a stableboy and a kitchen maid, but it was _his_ voice. He has Lady Sansa I think, and it sounds-"

Jaime pinched the bridge of his nose, knowing he needed to think, but before he could even begin, Clegane was moving toward the alley. The three of them trailed him, but the bigger man was suddenly moving as though his leg was never injured at all.

As they rounded the alley, Jaime saw Sandor lean his weight against a wooden door, breaking the thing off its hinges. Within, Baelish had Sansa against the wall with his arms around her, and the man barely had time to note the falling door before Clegane was on him.

Jaime and Hunt tried to stop him, but Sandor already had his dagger out. Sandor grabbed Baelish by the throat before the man could cry out and lifted him high on the wall, ignoring Baelish's scrabbling attempts to pull away the choking hand. With a deft move which had clearly been used before, Sandor rammed the knife upward through the fabric of Baelish's breeches into his genitals and, with a sideways slash, gelded him.

Jaime moved forward, pulled off his glove with his teeth and shoved it into Littlefinger's mouth just as the man's face began to purple and his eyes bulge. Baelish fought Sandor's hand at his throat, but to no avail, quickly losing consciousness.

Jaime turned to see Hunt had grabbed Sansa and was trying to convince her not to scream when he noticed Brienne outside the door in the alleyway with Oathkeeper drawn. He watched her step into a swing just as he reached the door to see her fighting Ser Shadrich with his two companions close behind. Leaving the small man to her, Jaime narrowly sidestepped Shadrich's swinging blade in the tight alleyway and drew his sword to confront the other two before they could go for help.

They both came at him at once and Jaime had to move quickly, dancing to the side, trying keep their blades from finding flesh. Then suddenly Brienne was beside him, drawing off the larger brutish one while Jaime fought the other. The other man thought him weak and swung wide. Jaime ducked and scarcely deflected the blow which grazed his arm, but was able to slide his blade quickly away before his opponent could recover and shoved a quick thrust into the man's heart.

Jaime glanced around to see that Hunt and Brienne were eliminating the large brute, and blessed the sounds of swordplay in the yard which may have covered the sounds of the battle.

"Quickly," Jaime said, gesturing Brienne and Hunt back into the small room where Sansa and Sandor watched one another from opposite walls.

"Sansa," Jaime greeted her with a nod.

"You will execute me for Joffrey's murder," Sansa said softly, scarce looking at him.

"No one is executing you," Jaime replied.

"The Blackfish is here," Sandor said. "Your uncle. He'll keep you safe."

"My uncle?" Sansa sputtered.

"Your story of being Baelish's daughter is a good one," Jaime said. "And as we've just breached every rule of hospitality, you can help us. Say Ser Shadrich and his fellows tried to rape you and your 'father' intervened but they killed him for it. We'll be the gallant rescuers who saved you."

Sansa glanced around the room at them, her gaze landing on Sandor. "When he said you were the one in the cowl," she said to Sandor, "I told him you would know me. But he said you would not see what you did not expect to find-"

"You know what I came here for," Sandor cut her off.

"Yes," Sansa whispered.

"My lady," Hunt interrupted, "will you follow along with our story?"

Sansa never took her eyes from Sandor.

"She'll go along with it," Sandor said as he bent down and drove his dagger into Baelish's heart to finish the unconscious man.

Jaime bolted out the door toward the practice yard and shouted, "Quickly, brigands!"

Whether Lord Nestor believed the tale or not, he let it stand. And when Baelish's man Lothor Brune questioned the story, Nestor silenced him. Jaime knew he should not have been surprised to see the Blackfish come striding up to the grisly scene, bold as brass, clearly certain he faced no threat.

When the Blackfish pulled him aside, Jaime said, "I can't pardon you outright, I don't have the authority. But I could broker a peace."

"Make me Lord Protector," Blackfish said. "Send me Edmure and his wife and child. I heard about your uncle. You'll need allies if you're to face off against the Tyrells and Frey and Bolton...and whatever else stirs in the south. You'll need the Vale, and you'll need whatever remains of the Riverlands."

Jaime sighed, "Am I to believe you'd bestir the Vale forces in winter? I can't do anything about Riverrun, not until the Freys are dealt with."

"If need be," the Blackfish replied. "If I say the lords of the Vale will bestir themselves, they will. And I'll have your word Riverrun will be returned before the end of winter. The sooner we have it back, the sooner I can promise the support of Tully bannermen."

"And Stannis?" Jaime asked.

"Difficult to imagine him brokering an actual alliance, but maybe he'll have learned something in the North," the Blackfish said. "Shireen Baratheon is near Sweetrobin's age."

"And near Tommen's."

"You know that will never happen," the Blackfish said. "Leave it to House Tully and House Stark to bridge this gap. We can all agree anything is better than Martells and Targaryens and Freys."

"Even Lannisters?"

"Mayhaps."

"Stannis will never treat with me, it's true," Jaime said.

"Give up the throne," the Blackfish said, "and even Stannis may surprise you."

Jaime had been trying not to think too heavily on it yet, but that may be the only way to save his children. Though it could as easily cost them their lives. "If we are allied and you make an alliance with Stannis, you will keep faith with me? I have your word, if I call your forces you will not hesitate?"

The Blackfish sneered at him, "So long as you keep your word, Kingslayer. However long that will be."

Jaime stared at the other man for a long moment, then turned back to Lord Nestor who was waiting nearby. "Lord Nestor, Ser Brynden and I have reached an accord, perhaps you would care to help us work out the finer details?"

That night, the Gates of the Moon was alive with feasting. An impromptu, thinly disguised celebration of Petyr Baelish's untimely death had lightened the weight of the unending snow falling outside. Lady Myranda Royce had seated Jaime in the middle of the high table across from herself, with Lord Nestor to his right and Sansa to his left.

At the far end of the high table, free of the robes of a brother of the Quiet Isle, Sandor Clegane scanned the room with a killer's eyes, seeming to dare someone to point a finger of accusation at the butcher of the Riverlands.

Brienne had been seated at Sandor's side. She sat rigid and tall in her men's garb, eating with the delicate table manners of a lady while watching the room with the battle wary eyes of a knight. Her hair had been pulled back and pinned tightly at the base of her neck, her scar exposed and naked to the eyes of the room. _So you have abandoned your newfound vanity, wench,_ he thought, fighting a smile.

Pod and Hunt had been seated at a table with some of the household knights and seemed contented enough. When he caught Jaime's eye, Hunt held his tankard up slightly in salute.

While everyone carried on the pretext that Sansa was a child mourning her father, Myranda Royce seemed to act as though the girl should simply be enjoying herself. _They already know who she is_, Jaime thought. For her part, Sansa played the role well, looking forlorn and rarely talking to anyone save in the sparest replies.

Later in the evening, when all had turned to revelry after the draining of too many casks of wine, Jaime turned to Sansa and quietly asked, "Have you had any contact with Tyrion?"

The girl glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "No, my lord."

He doubted she lied. "Does he know where you are?"

"I cannot imagine how he would, my lord," she said.

"Come, you need not be so terrified of me. We're family you and I," he said.

She looked up sharply at that, a fearful loathing filling her face for a moment as she looked at him. Then the look was gone, smoothed away as though it had never been. "Yes, my lord," she said.

Jaime wanted to laugh at how much she hated him. "Come, your husband rid you of Joffrey, surely that is enough to convince a Stark not all Lannisters are evil, even if they're kinslayers, _or Kingslayers_."

"Tyrion did not kill Joffrey," she said quietly but sharply, then bit her lip as though she hadn't meant to say it.

"Never say so to Tyrion, for he's convinced he did."

Something like steel asserted itself in Sansa's spine as she turned to face him. Then her gaze flew to the Blackfish who was on the other side of the room in conversation with Ser Harrold and she swallowed hard, the show of strength fading. She knew something, he could see it. He had the feeling she wanted to throw it in his face until she thought better of it.

"Who?" he asked softly.

Sansa's face lost all expression as she looked down at her hands and she spoke no more.

The merrymaking went deep into the night, though the crowd began to thin as the older guests abandoned the cheery hall for their beds.

It was midnight when the last dozen revelers gathered around the hall's main hearth, dragging over chairs and wrapping in quilts, to enjoy the roaring blaze the servants kept tended. Sandor stood in the shadows on the edge of the room, watching. Hunt laughed with Lord Nestor's son Ser Albar and Sansa had slipped out a side door to a balcony. _Likely to brood_, Jaime thought.

In the shadows at the side of the hearth, Brienne stood. Jaw tense, eyes cautious, he wondered why she stayed. Then he saw her hand flit over the handle of the dagger at her belt, and he knew she was playing bodyguard. The thought made him smile.

"Tell me, my lord," Myranda Royce called to him from near the fire, "is it true what they say? Did Lord Renly's shade ride with Ser Loras against Lord Stannis? One hardly knows what to make of such a tale."

Jaime looked at Brienne. She had frozen in place at the sound of Renly's name.

Jaime smiled at Lady Myranda, recalling Loras's tale of being too small for Renly's armor. "So they say, my lady. I suspect Renly's ghost is still seen often throughout the Seven Kingdoms," Jaime paused and glanced at Brienne. "Even here in the Vale, there may be those who still see his face."

"It is said you were with Lord Renly, my lady," Ser Albar said to Brienne.

"Lady Brienne was a member of Lord Renly's Kingsguard," Hunt said from where he was seated near Brienne.

Jaime saw the quick exchange of glances then, Ser Albar to his sister Lady Myranda, Lady Myranda to Ser Harrold, and around the small group of the Vale's young gossips; they were predators eager to flush out new prey, or perhaps they wanted some misguided vengeance for Ser Robar Royce. Obviously the rumors about Brienne had flown so far as the Vale, even the dark haired girl who tried to dress like a man looked on curiously from the edges of the crowd.

Sansa stepped back into the hall, lingering against the balcony door.

"A woman in the Kingsguard," Lady Myranda said lightly, turning to address Brienne with a pointed friendliness. "I can scarce picture it, even with a lady as fierce as you, Lady Brienne. What stories you must have to tell. Were you..._present_ for Lord Renly's death?"

Jaime looked at Brienne just as the rest of them did. He thought she would blush at the scrutiny of the crowd, but she only met their gazes with a cool look.

"I was with Lord Renly when he died," Brienne said, her expression showing no emotion at all.

"Forgive me, my lady," Ser Harrold said, sounding anything but polite, "but I have heard it said that you killed Lord Renly."

"Who says it?" Brienne asked, an almost imperceptible menace in her voice as she stared down the young knight. "Let the man who says I killed Lord Renly stand and declare himself, and tell him best he do so with steel in his hand."

Jaime felt the corners of his mouth tug upward as Brienne quietly unsheathed her claws, the woman who'd trounced Ser Harry stood before them again now. _It is the scar,_ he realized, it had chased the last of the girlishness from her face and left a woman who looked capable of anything.

"Do forgive Ser Harry," Lady Myranda said to Brienne, "he's unsure what to make of you, my lady. My friend Mya Stone likes to wear men's garb, so we do not find that so strange, but I fear she has never perfected the art of a man's deadly menace the way that you have, Lady Brienne. You quite terrify us all."

Brienne blinked down at the smaller woman, but said nothing, her face revealing nothing but vague contempt.

"Forgive Lady Brienne, my lady," Jaime said softly to Lady Myranda, wishing to end this charade of conversation. "She is too excellent with a sword to stand about looking like a helpless maid."

"Oh, of course, my lord," Lady Myranda said, her large brown eyes flipping up flirtatiously at him. "No woman can help how she looks. I was never so beautiful as I wished to be and doubtless Lady Brienne, like all women, has had to make the most of what the gods gave her, cruel though they may have been. Regard how she so cleverly scowls to frighten us all."

Hunt stood at that, stepping away from the fellows with whom he had been laughing and drinking moments before. Pod stirred from where he was quietly seated at Brienne's feet. Jaime dared not look at Brienne, but thought he heard even Sandor step away from the wall.

Jaime smiled at Lady Myranda, his sword hand flexing and stretching, the fingers he had lost longing for the hilt of a sword.

"Yes," Jaime said. "Regard, the Maid of Tarth, fearsome creature that she is. But you are wrong, my lady, to think the gods have been cruel, for Brienne holds their favor. As you see, they blessed her at birth with an ugly face."

Jaime looked up at Brienne then, and though he could see the hint of pain in her eyes, he knew it was hidden from the rest of the room.

"Without that face," Jaime continued, holding Brienne's gaze with a steely grip, "she may have been ordinary. Married young, spending her days at needlework and _gossip_ and her nights cringing as some worthless red haired sot worked away atop her. Instead, a sword was put in her hand, and there she stands: a warrior maid stepped fully fleshed from song. Look closely, for a legend stands before you and when you are old and grey, you will say, 'Once, in my youth, I broke bread with the Maid of Tarth'."

Brienne blinked slowly, her gaze intense and full of something Jaime didn't understand. Suddenly, their stare was broken by a loud creaking sound that turned every eye in the otherwise silent room to a blushing Sansa, who had leaned too hard against the balcony door which had opened to reveal a bright full moon peeking betwixt the clouds.

"The snow has stopped," Ser Albar said.

"Oh, it's so bright outside," Lady Myranda said with cheerfulness that sounded forced. "I must find my cloak. Who will build me a tower of snow?"

There was boisterous chatter and activity again as the party moved outside to play in the snow. Someone threw wide the doors of the balcony, revealing the full globe of the moon and Jaime watched Brienne slip outside through the open door behind Sansa, away from the rest of the group as they streamed toward the entrance of the stairwell at the end of the hall.

Hunt was herding Pod toward the stairwell, promising to show the boy how best to make a snowball. The knight paused as they passed and gave Jaime a brief understanding nod. Jaime returned the nod and followed the two of them.

In the courtyard, the young knights and ladies frolicked in the snow, dark cloaks whirling against the white drifts, voices raised in frivolity. Large snowballs were rolled and battlements erected for the snowball fight that quickly ensued.

Jaime had no cloak, so he stopped just outside the door, watching from the edge of the courtyard. Hunt was teaching Pod to make snowballs, but Pod needed no instruction in throwing them. Every one he threw hit its target and with a speed that was unmatched by any other in the field of battle. When Pod and Hunt took refuge with one of the warring parties, Jaime stepped forward to keep them in view, laughing and watching the boy beam as he was cheered by his fellows.

Above him, Brienne had cleared snow from the balcony bannister, a space wide enough for her to lean on with her forearms as she watched Pod at his heroics. Jaime heard Brienne giggle when Pod hit Ser Harry in the nose. And when Pod fired another almost immediately that knocked Ser Harry in the calf and drove him down to one knee, Jaime heard her break into laughter and had to look up, for he could not imagine such an unabashed sound coming from the Maid of Tarth.

And when he saw her, Jaime's breath caught in his throat, for Brienne was smiling-and it was such a thing as he had never seen.

Her eyes were bright and blue in the soft light of the moon and her smile was wide and carefree. The sight of it was like a fist tightening within his chest and he found himself drawn toward the balcony.

She looked down as he approached, and her gaze, full of mirth, met his as though they shared some secret jest. Then a shower of snow blanketed him and stole his breath.

Jaime shook off the freezing stuff, wiping it out of his eyes to see she had pushed it off the bannister onto his head. She leaned forward, bent double with laughter and their gazes caught again and held as though some invisible cord had been drawn tight between them, thrumming with a pulse that made his breath grow short and ragged. He began to move toward the entrance back into the castle, never looking away from her.

Brienne's eyes followed him, but as he slipped nearer the castle, she began to back away from the balcony. He broke their gaze then and entered the door, taking the stairs two at a time, climbing back to the dining hall just in time to see Brienne edge off the balcony and back into the room to face him. The snow was still in his hair and clung to his face and he swiped another bit out of his beard as he met her gaze again.

Her eyes still held some laughter, but her smile was nearly gone. She watched him carefully, her wide blue eyes full of questions, and she began to back slowly away from him as he advanced, the distance between them pulsing with the deep beats of the drums of war.

Sandor and Sansa stood in the middle of the hall, Sandor clearly giving Sansa some instruction on how to use a dagger to stab a chair, but they had paused in their lesson to watch Jaime as he backed Brienne, step by step, toward the far end of the hall.

Brienne's legs were longer than his own, but Jaime was moving forward and she was moving backward and he was gaining on her, his eyes holding hers in an unbreakable stare.

They had nearly reached the end of the hall when Jaime narrowed his eyes at her, increasing his pace. Like frightened game, she suddenly broke and turned to run. He chased her through the far door of the hall and down the winding stair to another entrance to the courtyard bound in by low garden walls. Brienne set out to run through the gate in the wall, but Jaime vaulted the wall and caught her, tackling her into a bank of snow that enveloped them both.

"There is no honor in this!" she cried out in a tone that fell somewhere between a gasp and a taunt; she offered almost no resistance when he wrestled her beneath him. He grabbed a handful of snow and mashed it into her face.

Brienne sputtered and laughed and tried to shake the snow off, for he had pinned one arm under her and held the other trapped between them as he rolled atop her. He laughed and reached up to clear the snow away, his hand cradling her cheek as he brushed his thumb along her brow. She took a shaky breath then, and when he met her gaze again it was dark and heavy.

Never taking his eyes from hers, he ran his thumb over her cheek, then moved it lower to brush the snow from her mouth. Her breath hitched when he touched her there, and she looked almost sorrowful as he ran his thumb with deliberate slowness along her upper lip which was cherry-red from the cold. Her gaze left his then and slipped down to watch his mouth and he felt his own breath falter as he leaned forward and kissed her.

It was a slow and gentle thing, their kiss, for a heartbeat or two, but when his hand slid beneath her neck and pulled her to him, it became something else. His teeth grazed her lower lip and her mouth fell open easily, eagerly, and the softest moan vibrated through her as he deepened the kiss.

One of her hands had been freed and as her fingers ghosted along his jawline he gave her a moan of his own, pushing her down into the snow as their kiss became all consuming.

It was the sound of laughter that reached him through the haze of the kiss, a warning that the snowball fighters were approaching. He lifted his mouth from hers, pausing for a moment to look down at her well-kissed lips and uncertain eyes. _A young maid staring at a man who just stole a kiss_, he thought. A man who just happened to be Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

"No, there is no honor in this," he whispered and gave her one last long look, then jumped up and walked toward the doorway of the castle before they were discovered.

Jaime slipped inside and leaned against the wall beside the doorway, trying to catch his breath.

In the courtyard, he heard the shrieks as the fight came near, he heard Hunt laughing, then the footsteps pounded away as they ran elsewhere.

"Ser Hyle." Brienne's voice called softly from outside.

"My lady?" Hunt responded, sounding out of breath.

"Ser Hyle, can you see me?" Brienne asked.

Hunt laughed. "Of course, my lady. You're standing right before me."

"No, I... Can you see my face clearly?" she asked.

Jaime almost glanced out the door, but something kept him where he was.

"I can see you've been dunked in the snow," Hunt said quietly. "I can see that someone has tugged your hair free from where it was pinned. I can see your lips are freshly kissed."

"Oh," Brienne replied in a whisper Jaime barely heard.

"Have I need to defend your honor, Brienne?" Hunt asked with no playfulness.

"No," Brienne said.

"Marry me," Hunt said. "Be my wife."

Brienne gave a short, bitter laugh. "I may never recover Tarth, ser. As far as I know, I am orphaned and penniless with only the clothes on my back."

"We would do well enough, I think," Hunt said. "If Tarth is never recovered, no matter. I'll take service with some lord or other."

"Ser, you do me great honor, but I will never wed," Brienne said solemnly. "I will never forget your friendship to me and should you ever need my help, you need only ask."

"Ah, my lady, you wound me," Hunt said with a chuckle. "What will you do now? Where will you go?"

"Tarth," she replied softly.

"As your friend, I would wish you valued your life better than to throw it away," Hunt said.

"My life is worth little while sellswords occupy my home," she said.

Jaime had heard enough and turned to climb the stairs to the dining hall. Sandor was alone, standing before the hearth with a tankard in hand.

"I heard a rumor you were drinking again," Jaime said.

"Did you catch her?" Sandor asked, barely sparing him a glance.

"I did," Jaime said softly.

"The fuck you doing up here talking to me, then? Your sister geld you before she sent you away?"

"You're the expert on gelding," Jaime replied. "Where is my sweet little good-sister?"

"Bed," Sandor said, then he took a long drink.

"Alone?" Jaime asked, feigning innocence.

Sandor's gaze sliced into him.

Jaime smiled and walked away, going out onto the balcony to stare awhile at the moon before going back inside to climb the tower steps to his bedchamber. The servants had lit the fire in his hearth hours before, for the logs had burnt down to embers. In the faint light, he saw that the room to Brienne's small chamber was closed and he wondered if she was already inside.

Jaime hung his sword from his bedpost and slipped his dagger under his pillow before he climbed beneath the heavy furs. It was only then that he noticed it, laid out perfectly atop the covers. Oathkeeper.

He reached for the sword and lifted it, the rubies in the scabbard and on the hilt catching the faint firelight with a blood-red glow. Gently, he gripped it in his only hand, the perfect weight of it evident even when held by the scabbard. Anger and sadness crept up from his gut and into his throat.

Her door seemed to call to him; he walked to it with heavy steps, awkwardly gripping the sword under his right armpit. With a sharp tug, he swung the door open, sending it banging against the wall of his bedchamber with a cracking sound.

Brienne sat against the headboard of her bed, her arms wrapped around her knees which were pulled up to her chest. She lifted her head from her forearm to look at him. The glow from his fire put just enough light on her face to show it was wet.

"This," he said through gritted teeth, grasping Oathkeeper from where he'd wedged it under his right arm and shoving it toward her, "was a _gift_."

She stared at him, then looked at Oathkeeper. When she spoke, her voice rasped. "You gave it to me for a quest. To fulfill our oaths, to find Sansa Stark. She is found. The quest is fulfilled."

Jaime swallowed hard, the rage he felt making it difficult to speak. "I gave this sword to _you_, Brienne, and asked you to call it Oathkeeper. It is not a tool to complete a quest. It is your blade, it is your weapon. It is the only thing I had to give and I meant you to wield it all your days, I meant you to leave it to your children, I meant it to be your legacy."

He threw Oathkeeper onto the bed at her feet. She looked down at it sadly and then back up at him, her eyes soft and heavy with unshed tears. "And now it is all _I_ have to give," she said softly. "You go to meet your enemies, Jaime. Let me part from you knowing you meet them with Oathkeeper in your hand."

When he tried to draw a breath, the ache in his chest was nearly unbearable. The anger had left him and in its place was only sorrow and dread, for her gaze held things he dared not see. She grimaced, almost in apology and dropped her forehead back down onto her arms.

He backed out of the room, but stopped in her doorway and whispered, "Leave this door open."

Jaime saw her nod without lifting her head and made himself return to his bed, slipping beneath the covers. For hours he tried to sleep, but all he could do was watch the open door. He heard her soft sobs for a time, and when they stopped, he wondered if she might walk through the door, wondered if she might come to his bed, but she didn't.

Sometime in the night he drifted off to sleep, for he woke in the morning to see that the snow had resumed. And as he rolled over, he saw that she had taken his sword from where he'd hung it on his bedpost and left Oathkeeper in its place.

He rose and dressed and walked to the door of her room, but it was empty. With a sigh, he walked to the bedpost, took Oathkeeper down, and strapped it about his waist.


	7. Revealed In Firelight

Brienne blinked through her fatigue and raised the collar of her cloak against the swirling snowfall as it gusted and tried to steal her breath. The cold was welcome, its crisp scent kept her bright and sharp and scrubbed all thoughts of the night before from her mind.

She stood on the side of the practice yard watching Pod attack a straw man with the new technique she had just shown him. The boy moved slowly but carefully and held his wrist at precisely the angle she had demonstrated.

"Will you take Pod with you?" Ser Hyle asked, coming to stand beside her.

"I dare not," she said softly, looking down at her boots. "I thought I might speak to Ser Brynden."

"The boy is a squire, you know, you're training him to face danger," Ser Hyle said.

"Yes, and he has faced enough for one so young. I cannot bring him with me-"

"Because you know you will not survive," Ser Hyle said.

Brienne ground her teeth, wishing to avoid the subject. "Pod would be a worry for me, an extra burden. I will be more nimble on my own."

"I mean to speak to Ser Brynden for my own sake, though I am uncertain if he will accept my service. If not, I will find some other situation. If Pod cannot remain here, I will take him with me. Though being squire to a hedge knight is no great achievement."

"Thank you," Brienne said, turning to look at Ser Hyle. "Even sleeping in the hedges, Pod will fare well with you."

"Better than he'll fare with you, as you'll be dead," Ser Hyle said with an exasperated sigh. Then he walked over to Pod and began to correct the boy's footwork.

From the corner of her eye, Brienne saw Jaime approach the practice yard. His hair was unkempt as if he'd just rolled out of bed, his jaw was rigid and sharp beneath his beard as though his teeth were clenched. And his eyes were hard as stone when they found her across the yard. Golden and menacing, he bore down on her with a fury to match the new fledged blizzard which blew snow in swirling, artful waves with each stride of his black leather boots.

Oathkeeper was belted about his waist, perched at a casual angle below his hip as though it had been forged to rest there in deadly elegance. _It was_, she thought.

Still twenty paces away, Jaime stopped, pointed a finger at her, and barked, "You took my sword, wench, and I'll have it back."

_Wench._

Brienne's fingers slipped to the strange hilt now resting against her own hip.

"No," she replied.

She was tired from lack of sleep and weeping, and weary of carrying the burdens of her worry for Pod, for her father, for Jaime. She was exhausted from the burning of confusing kisses and quests completed and the cruelty of strangers. She had no patience left to endure being called wench, especially by Jaime. _I only want to protect you,_ she thought.

Jaime seemed to hear her as though she had spoken aloud. He glared at her, cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow as though to say 'Do not try me, Brienne'.

She glared back at him. _Do not try _me_, Jaime._

He read her thoughts, she could see it. With a wild shake of his head, he drew Oathkeeper and came at her.

Brienne scarcely drew Jaime's own steel in time to catch his first blow. Oathkeeper was no practice blade, no blunted tourney sword. Jaime charged her with naked Valyrian steel as though he meant to kill her. The blade she held was balanced, its edge was superb and it was easy to handle, but it was nothing compared to Oathkeeper and she felt almost clumsy as she tried to survive his attack.

This was the Lion of Lannister, the Kingslayer, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard who faced her now. He was like the Warrior come to life. Even in his left hand, Oathkeeper roared as it never had for Brienne. Whatever battering, beating, rigorous re-forging Sandor Clegane had given Jaime, it was worth the agony, for his left arm had been awakened. There was no hesitation before every stroke as there had been before, his left arm strove to answer his every whim as his right once had, his strength was equal to her own.

He would never be as good as he once had been, she knew, but it did not matter.

He was beating her.

Every strike she countered was returned again with lightning speed. Every time she tried to simply keep pace with him and let him wear himself out, he slipped into an opening and she barely had time to hold him off.

She was tiring, and when he swung low for her left hip, she had to use two hands on the hilt to hold off the blow. She stopped it, but it slowed her next response and with the flat of his blade he spun around and slapped the back of her right thigh, sending her to her knees. He kicked the blade out of her hands and sent her sprawling onto her back.

Brienne lay in the middle of the practice yard trying to breathe. Realizing that for all that he'd just bruised her, he'd never so much as knicked her. Above her, she saw him sheath the red and black blade; watched as he unbuckled its belt from his waist. Then he dropped Oathkeeper at her side and bent down to unbuckle the swordbelt she wore-_his_ swordbelt.

"Never let that sword leave your side again," Jaime said fiercely, wrestling one-handed with the buckle at her waist. "In the spring, when I sail to Tarth to look for your bones, when I dig through whatever pile of _refuse_ the Golden Company uses to dispose of the corpses of _fools_ who pound on the gates of captured keeps demanding honorable single combat from _sellswords_, I expect to find that blade in your hand so that I need not waste time trying to identify you by your crooked teeth!"

He pulled off the belt, flipping her onto her side as he did and buckled it about his own waist as he stalked over to retrieve his blade, the one he'd sent flying. Once it was sheathed safely at his hip, he walked away without ever giving her another glance.

Brienne pushed to a sitting position and saw that every eye in the practice yard was riveted on them. Most watched Jaime's retreating back, but many of them stared at her. She had just been humiliated; a blush rose up her neck and into her cheeks. She stood quickly, picked up Oathkeeper, and left the practice yard, trying to walk as though her thigh was not throbbing in protest.

She couldn't go to her bedchamber, lest she find Jaime there, and she could not risk the main hall, for he may be there as well. The bathhouse came to mind and her feet turned that direction without another thought.

Within the steamy room one or two ladies were present, but Brienne ignored them and asked one of the servants to prepare one of the large wooden tubs for her as she went to sit on a bench against the wall. She meant to pull her boots off and undress, but instead she found herself dropping her head into her hands as she tried to collect herself.

_He bested me_, she thought, _he bested me._

With sharp tugs, Brienne removed her boots, her leather, her wool. She threw her clothes on the ground as though they burned her. When she stood naked, she walked to where a silvered hand mirror lay on a table against the wall. She raised it with a trembling hand and she looked at her face, just as she had after she'd bathed the night they arrived at the Gates of the Moon. She had stood in this very spot, wrapped in her linen towel, struck dumb by the ruin of her cheek.

Sandor Clegane had spoken truly, she had always been ugly, but the scar made her face grotesque-it was all anyone would ever see. She had been sickened by the sight of it, knowing at last that a woman's life was beyond her reach. Knowing that her sword was all she had, all she was.

She put the mirror down, her lashes falling to her cheeks as she remembered what Jaime's eyes had told her last night as he said such awful, wonderful things. That her face didn't matter, her worth lay elsewhere: in her sword arm, in her honor. And she'd loved him for it; loved him as she'd loved Renly when the Rainbow cloak was first flung about her shoulders. _Loved him..._

_I am taller than any other woman,_ she had thought the night before as she had gone outside to let the moonlight bathe her face while the others played in the snow. _My arms are strong and were made to wield a greatsword, my face is scarred and terrifying, and I am all that I was meant to be._

It had been a moment of clarity and surety, and Brienne had been filled with purpose, something she had not felt since she left Tarth to join Renly. She had felt equal to the task set before her; whatever awaited her on Tarth. _Death._ Surely she had been born for this. _To die._ Jaime had laid it out so simply before her, like a battle commander spreading a map on a table: Brienne was ugly and unwanted, tall and strong, had failed Renly and Catelyn, all so she could be prepared for this moment. Because her life was _always meant_ to be of use to her house.

Then he had kissed her and _ruined_ it all, leaving her longing again for things she could never have, holding the hopes of a young girl before her-_dangling them like morsels of food before the starving_-only to snatch them away again and leave her lost and uncertain.

Brienne slipped into the steaming wooden tub, her blood charging through her veins as the memory overtook her.

_In the dark you'd be as beautiful as any other woman,_ Ser Hyle had once told her.

Last night Jaime's green eyes had watched her, _held_ her, with such warmth that she had forgotten the cold and the snow, the taunts of Ser Harry and the Royces, she had forgotten even the truth of her face and his sister and they had been just Jaime and Brienne, caught in a world of white where his lips met hers. And he had borne her down into the virgin snow, taking all the breath from her body and replacing it with pulsing, liquid heat. And she had burned and wanted and _understood_ what it was that made Robert and Rhaegar tear apart a kingdom. For in that moment she would have done anything to keep him, she would have forsaken any vow, she would have betrayed all she held dear.

Then he'd left her in the snow. As she'd known he would. _Should have known, I _should_ have known, for dreams end on waking._ And she had tried to set things aright in her mind, had tried to arrange the pieces of her world so that they fit in place again as they had only moments before. But it was useless.

And now he had bested her. Beaten her. She slipped down and let the water of her bath cover her head. For a moment or two, she held her breath and let the water envelop her as she had done when she was a child. It was quiet with only the sound of her pulse in her ears. Even if the beat of it whispered his name. _Jaime, Jaime, Jaime._

Brienne stood up from the bath, wrapped herself in a towel and reached for the clothing that had been brought for her. She pulled on the borrowed breeches, perfectly serviceable, their shortness hidden beneath her boots. Over her head, she slipped on the undertunic which had long enough sleeves, though it had been made for a barrel-chested man twice her weight. And the tunic. Oh, the tunic was very fine and she knew it well. It was the one Jaime had been wearing when she found him at Pennytree. Carefully wrought in red and gold on the dun colored linen, the Lannister coat of arms glared out at her; the servants must have found it in the bedchamber, laundered it, and mistaken it for her own.

She nearly sent the servant for something else, but some part of her, some quiet urge, had her reaching for it and slipping it over her head before she could think better of it.

By the time she reached the door of the solar where they'd been taken to meet Baelish when they first arrived, she had grown accustomed to the black stares Jaime's coat of arms drew. Sandor, who was apparently awaiting an audience as well, looked her up and down with a smirk.

They were both admitted at the same time by a man at arms, and Brienne knew she should not be surprised to find Jaime closeted within with Ser Brynden.

She expected him to roll his eyes at her attire, or to make a joke, but she wasn't prepared for the heat she felt when her gaze met his or for the way his eyes seemed to soften at the sight of her, all his previous anger bled from him as though it had never existed. And in a blink her own anger and frustration were forgotten. Her breathing grew heavy, her eyes taking in his mussed golden curls where they nearly brushed his shoulders, his beard hiding what might have been a smile playing about his lips. _Don't look at his lips,_ she told herself.

Ser Brynden took in her attire with obvious distaste and Brienne forced her attention to her original purpose. "Ser Brynden," she said. "I am unable to take my squire with me when I leave the Vale. He is a good lad, stout of heart, loyal, and uncomplaining. I would ask you to find a place for him in your household. If not as your own personal squire, perhaps as-"

"Yes," Ser Brynden interrupted, "I'll take on your squire. Hunt tells me you intend to fling yourself on a sword in the south."

Brienne flushed, but drew herself to her full height. "I must go home."

"I'm not fond of you, woman," Ser Brynden said, "but let me give you some advice. When this honorless, Kingslaying, cripple stole my family seat," Ser Brynden continued with a glare at Jaime, "I could have done what you're planning. Instead, I swallowed my pride, kept my head low, and bided my time. You can't help anyone if you're dead."

"Thank you for taking Podrick, Ser Brynden, he will serve you well," Brienne said, offering no response, but giving the man a curt nod before she turned to leave.

"My niece tells me she has taken you into her service, Clegane," Ser Brynden said as Brienne was walking toward the door. "To which I say, dogs-"

A maester was at the door when Brienne opened it, and the way he bustled past her without even glancing at her scar made her turn back into the room, closing the door behind her.

"My lords," the maester said with a quick bow as he approached both Jaime and Ser Brynden with a missive held high in his hand.

Jaime looked tense.

"What is it, man?" Ser Brynden asked.

_Please, not Tarth. Not my father,_ Brienne prayed.

"Queen Cersei," the maester said, and Brienne heard Jaime draw a sharp breath. "Her cousin Lancel Lannister bore witness against her and she was assured to be found guilty of King Robert's murder at the least, so she demanded trial by combat. A Ser Robert Strong, lately of the Kingsguard was her champion and prevailed."

Jaime walked to the fireplace and leaned his right elbow against the mantle, his forehead leaning forward to rest on his golden hand, the light from the fire caressing his face with warm tones. His relief was audible and palpable.

Brienne watched him, a lump in her throat.

"There is more, my lords," the maester continued. "Queen Cersei fled in the night, taking the little king and this Ser Robert with her. Lord Mace Tyrell demands the king's return."

Jaime laughed at this last bit. He glanced at Brienne with a smile that could light a room.

"And the Tyrell girl?" Sandor asked.

"Her trial is postponed, in hopes Ser Loras will recover and return from Dragonstone," the maester said, "though the High Septon insists it cannot be put off indefinitely and another champion from the Kingsguard must be chosen."

"Thank you, maester," Ser Brynden said as the maester made his bows again and hustled out of the room.

Brienne turned to leave again, but this time she heard footsteps behind her and knew it was Jaime who fell into step beside her.

"Casterly Rock," he said as they stepped into the long corridor. "She will go home. I hope she has seen to Myrcella. I can meet them there."

"It is the best news you could hope for," Brienne said.

"I can defend Casterly Rock," Jaime continued, and she knew he was already making plans. "For the winter at least, I can keep them safe. As soon as this bloody snow stops, I can go."

"Yes," Brienne replied, for yes was a short word and easy to say. He would not even travel so far as Gulltown with her now. They would part soon. As soon as the roads out of the Vale could be risked.

"Come with me," he said softly. "Help me save my children."

_No, there is no honor in this._

"I must- my father-"

Jaime stopped her with a hand on her arm. They stood before the door out to the courtyard and a gust of falling snow blew in on them as a servant entered. Jaime's gaze was so firm, so resolute. _He can see a future again_, she realized, _he has seen through his hopelessness._

When he saw his sister again, would he even remember their snowy kiss? Would it be a fleeting moment of his journey that would slip away like the memory of what he'd eaten at last night's supper?

_I will carry it every moment of my life,_ she thought.

"Brienne," he said. "Come with me. I cannot spare soldiers, but from the Rock we could hire mercenaries. You could go back with a force of men. If you can wait until Spring, I can come with you. We could-"

"I thank you for the offer. You have been a good friend to me, Ser."

"_Ser._"

"My lord?"

"My lord."

"_Jaime_?" she asked in a whisper.

"Jaime," he said, glaring at her for a moment before he turned and walked away from her, his fury ringing with every footstep.

Brienne practically ran out the door and toward the practice yard, but found it had been abandoned in the now sweeping winds of the snowstorm. The snow outside the carefully cleared paths already reached her waist and she wondered how long she would be delayed as she stood alone in the yard looking about her at the piling snow. _I hope it is weeks,_ some selfish part of her whispered. _No, I must leave soon._

"My lady, have you no cloak?"

Brienne turned to see Sansa Stark had joined her. "I forgot Lady...Alayne."

"Come inside," Sansa said, gesturing for Brienne to follow her.

Brienne did as Sansa bid, for she had nowhere to go and her eyes were beginning to blur and her mind was muddled. Sansa led her up and up and up the stone steps of one of the towers and into a small solar, stopping at the door to give Brienne's tunic a long, hard look.

"Warm yourself by the fire, my lady, please," Sansa said.

"Brienne. Please, call me Brienne."

"Brienne. I have heard a strange tale, Brienne," Sansa said, her face full of uncertainty. "Of Lady Catelyn Stark and the charge she gave you. And...strange stories of that lady returning to life only to be killed again by Jaime Lannister."

"Why would Clegane tell you that?" Brienne asked in exasperation, knowing that the real Catelyn Stark would never have wanted her daughter to know what had become of her.

"Because it is true," Sansa said simply.

Brienne sighed. She was beaten and heartbroken and had no stomach for pretense. "Yes, it is true. I loved Lady Catelyn, she was so kind to me. We went to King's Landing, intending to return you- Lady Catelyn's daughters to her. But they weren't there, one was believed dead, the other fled. And Jaime sent me after her, to hide her and keep her safe, even from his own kin. It's all true. Though I should have killed the creature who was Catelyn Stark myself. Jaime did the thing I could not, and I was grateful."

Sansa took all this in and nodded. "I hate him," she said softly.

_I love him,_ Brienne thought, and found herself sinking to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest as she had the night before, trying to hold herself together.

"He is the best man I know," Brienne said. "He is loyal to the point of madness, to the point that betrayal nearly breaks him. He is ruthless on behalf of those he loves. He is wicked and he can be cruel, but he finds worth where others see only waste. The world looks at him and sees a monster, and once I thought he was a monster as well, but I was wrong. His honor is sure and true and it has saved me over and over and over again. And mine has only failed him."

Sansa had dropped to her knees beside Brienne. "Sandor says you are honest. That you have honor."

Brienne covered her face with her hands. "I did. But I am the betrayer. I betrayed _him_."

"And you find him worthy of this devotion? Tyrion did seem to love him, but when I heard how he hates Tyrion-"

"Jaime loved Tyrion. _Still_ loves him, I think, but they have harmed one another. Tyrion killed Joffrey," Brienne said, unsure why she was defending Jaime to a girl who had more reason than most to hate him.

"Tyrion did not kill Joffrey," Sansa said. The girl said it with such conviction that Brienne believed her. Had Jaime been right in King's Landing? Could it have been Sansa herself? Would Tyrion have lied even to his own brother to protect her?

Brienne did not want to know. "May I tell Jaime so? It has broken his heart to lose his little brother to this falsehood, I think."

"Lannister heartbreak is of little concern to me," Sansa said with a soft politeness that belied the venom in her words.

"Was Tyrion so cruel to you?"

"No," Sansa said, "he was the best of them, but still one of them."

"Are you yet a maid? Was he so kind as that?" Brienne asked.

"I am a maid," Sansa said. "Are you?"

Brienne blushed, but nodded. "Thanks to Jaime. He saved me from rape, he is not the monster you think him."

Sansa searched Brienne's face. "This is how he won your loyalty," she said softly. "You thought you were lost, they were pulling you down, you thought they would take you and he appeared and he saved you."

"Yes," Brienne said, though that was not quite how it had been. "When no one else could have, when no one else _would_ have, Jaime saved me."

Sansa nodded sagely and sat back on her heels. "I understand," the girl said. "You feel safe with him."

Brienne had not thought of it like that. There were times she felt anything but safe with Jaime, but there was no way to explain it to Sansa.

"I wish never to be parted from him," Brienne said softly, because it was true, and because it felt good to speak the truth aloud.

Sansa smiled at her and sat beside her while they both stared into the flames, each with their own thoughts.

That night, the dining hall was more subdued. There were plans to hold a funeral for Baelish in three days' time and there was much discussion of this near to where Brienne sat with Sandor.

"Wonder if they'll throw his balls in the tomb with him," Sandor quipped softly so only she could hear.

She rolled her eyes, but couldn't help her slight laugh. "At least she's still a maid," Brienne said under her breath.

Sandor gave her a hard look at that. Brienne noticed that Sansa glanced down at them from where she was seated next to Jaime. Brienne gave the girl a small smile and Sansa returned it. Jaime hadn't so much as glanced her way all evening.

"You wear that tunic again tomorrow and you'll be joining Baelish," Sandor said in his rasping voice. "Even Lannister knows better than to inflame this lot by wearing it."

"I see no dishonor in it," she said.

"You wouldn't," Sandor said. "You going with him to the Rock? It would be worth the journey just to see Cersei Lannister's face when she sees you wearing it."

"I am going home."

"Die how you want."

"I may not die.

"True. Some sellsword could chain you up and make you his whore. A half-blind sellsword, mind. Course you'd wish you were dead."

"I'm good with a blade," Brienne said, "and with a mace. It is my home and I know its terrain well. Why does everyone assume I will not survive?"

"Because you're too bloody honorable. You'll ride up and ask them to leave," Sandor said, then he took a long gulp of his ale. "Your only hope would be finding some fool with half an army and no land of his own to marry you and help you take your island back, and that's assuming Connington doesn't actually have Aegon Targaryen, and that he doesn't conquer the whole of Westeros and then come back to finish you off."

Brienne stood and left the table. She left the hall and walked outside, but it was blizzarding and she wasn't dressed for it. In the end, she curled up on her bed in her tiny chamber. "Closet," Jaime had called it.

Her room had no hearth, but Jaime's did and the servants had built a roaring blaze in it. Through her open door she watched the flames, considering what she could say to make amends to Jaime.

And then he was there, standing in her doorway, leaning against the doorpost with the arrogance of a prince. His hair was glowing in the firelight, perfectly tousled as though he'd just run his hand through it. "Bruised?" he asked mockingly.

"No, you?" she threw back, all thoughts of amends burnt away by her flaring anger.

"You never touched me," he taunted, his hand smoothing his beard along his jaw as he smirked.

"No. You touched me."

He snorted. "Do you really want to talk about that?"

All her confidence left her. "No."

"No."

"Jaime, I talked to Sansa."

"She hates me."

"Yes," Brienne said, sitting up against the headboard of the small bed. "But, she told me Tyrion didn't kill Joffrey."

She watched his face, saw his pained smile. "Yes, she hinted as much to me. So I am the only rotten brother."

"You love him, you freed him."

"I wronged him."

"He will forgive you," Brienne said.

"You always think everyone will forgive me. Why? Because you did?" Jaime turned away then, grabbed a chair from beside the hearth, and put it down in the doorway. As he sat down, he gave her a grimace. "My brother had a wife, you see."

"Sansa..."

"No, before Sansa. When he was young, little older than Sansa. He and I were out riding in the Westerlands and I arranged a farce for him as I thought it was time he lay with a woman. I hired a young unblooded whore to play the part of a young maiden crofter's daughter. As Tyrion and I came riding down the road, she came bursting through the woods at the roadside, rapists on her heels. Of course I made a great show of chasing off these rapists so that Tyrion could play the hero."

Brienne nodded for him to continue.

"So," Jaime continued, "as I was off playing at dispensing justice, Tyrion took the girl into the next town and to the town's inn, as I had intended. He fed her, he charmed her, and by the time I arrived, he was taking her upstairs to deflower her. My brotherly duties done, I left him to her, thinking he would enjoy a pleasant evening fucking the girl and leave her in the morning a new man."

Brienne watched Jaime closely, for his tone seemed to become more wry with every word.

"Only imagine my surprise," Jaime said, "when my father told me Tyrion had married the little hussy. My deception had been too good. Two weeks this marriage continued, hidden away in some cottage in the woods, before it was discovered. He was so happy with her-you would have had to know him to understand the look on his face when we found him-but I knew him and I could see it, and I saw it crumble when I told him the truth. My father felt Tyrion needed to learn a lesson from this, so after I had told Tyrion the truth, my father had the girl sent to the barracks to service his soldiers. He made Tyrion watch, to see what a whore she really was. And then, before my father sent the girl on her way, he had Tyrion take her again as well, and while my father paid her a silver for each soldier who took her, he paid her a gold dragon for Tyrion."

"Jaime," Brienne said sadly, "you didn't-"

"Oh no," he said, his voice full of self-loathing, "I didn't know about the barracks until well after it had happened."

"You couldn't have known, Jaime, it was a misguided act of love and you are not responsible for your father's villainy," she said. "Surely Tyrion will understand you hired her to make him happy and he will forgive-"

Jaime laughed then, a harsh, bitter sound. "You're so naive. Innocent. He was too, then, my sweet little brother who only longed to be loved. And he was convinced she loved him until I told him otherwise. I couldn't understand the importance of that. Not then. She was a pretty enough little thing, but a peasant and unsophisticated, and nothing compared to Cersei and I could not imagine a man loving any woman who was less than Cersei."

Brienne's throat had gone dry.

"My father convinced me, and I thought he was right. The girl would have been an embarrassment to us and she had to be dealt with. I still hoped my father would give Casterly Rock to Tyrion, perhaps I was still a bit naive too. This girl could not be his wife if that was to happen. The marriage needed to be annulled and for all I knew she was only after his gold anyway."

Brienne dropped her gaze from his, unable to look at him.

"You see I told my brother the story I just told you, but it is only a story. The truth is that Tyrion's little wife was what she appeared. A crofter's daughter who loved him, who gave him her maidenhead freely the night she met him, who married him, my misshapen, unloved little brother. And I took her from him."

Brienne swallowed hard and stared at the floor. Everything hurt. Her heart, her soul, her calf, her cheek, they all ached. She thought of Tyrion Lannister, and though she had never met him, she felt a kinship with him in that moment she'd never before imagined. As for the girl Tyrion had married, Brienne could have wept for her.

"If I were Tyrion, I too would have killed your father," Brienne said softly, still unable to look at Jaime.

"He threatened to kill me the next time he sees me," Jaime said.

"I am not surprised," she said.

"Has this finally killed your foolish belief in my honor?"

She shook her head slowly, but in truth she could not meet his eyes. "You told him the truth," she said, simply unsure what else could be said.

He let out a bitter, laughing growl. "The truth. I rarely thought of it for years. It was only after my time in the dungeons of Riverrun that it started to wear at me. Only after I met you. With you constantly reminding me I had shit for honor and forever throwing my crimes in my face, it all floated to the surface and I began to understand what I had done. It was a debt I needed to pay."

Brienne looked up at him then. His eyes bored into hers. She might once have seen only anger there, but she could see the pain now, the guilt. "What has any of this was to do with me?" she asked. "Were you thinking of Tyrion's wife when you saved me?"

"How long are you going to wear my colors?" he asked, his gaze raking her in a way that left her beginning to flush.

"Is that why you saved me from rape? Is that why you called out that night? Sapphires. Was that to make up in some way for Tyrion's wife?"

"Blue is a better color on you."

"Am I your redemption, Jaime? You've wronged your brother and this poor sad girl, so you'll save me to atone? Why have you ever been kind to me? Why save me and nurse me back to health and talk to me and fight with me? Why give me your sword? Why tell me your secrets? Was it really for honor? I have never known."

"Red is almost as bad as pink."

"You want your bloody tunic? Here," she said, pulling it off, wadding it up and throwing it in his face.

"Why stop there?" He asked, gesturing at the rest of her clothes as he gripped the tunic in his hand.

"Why? I am nothing compared to Cersei."

"Wench, I believe that's the first time you've ever uttered her name." His eyes had grown dark, the green lost to the black of his pupils. "What could have roused such passion that you would allow her name to profane your lips?"

"Wench," she repeated. She tried to ignore the quickening of her pulse.

"Oh yes, Brienne, _wench_."

"Ser?"

"Kingslayer, you mean."

"Do you want me to hate you, Jaime? I would be happy to hate you, tell me how."

"Come out of that room," he said. "Come to my bed and I promise you, you'll hate me by morning."

His words hung in the air between them, naked and screaming.

Her breath caught as she stared at him. "I am tall and ugly and, as you know, I was made to kill men, not lie with them. I grow tired of your cruelty."

"Yes, I am cruel," he said as he stood, leaning against the doorpost again, staring her down. "Do you know what happens between a woman and a man when they lie together?"

"Yes," she said, cursing her darkening blush.

"Truly?"

She grew restless, nearly writhing under his gaze. His eyes were dark and alive in the firelight, full of mischief and other things she could not allow herself to see. _Don't make me believe that you want me,_ she thought.

"Why do you taunt me with this?" she asked. "Is this how you amuse yourself so you can stay faithful to her even when you're apart? You'll be back at Casterly Rock soon enough."

"Yes. Without you," he answered. Then he continued his taunt, "There's more to what happens between a man and a woman than just removing your clothes and lying there naked."

"I lived in a camp full of soldiers, Jaime."

"A man would want to touch you between your legs, Brienne," he said. "He would want to slip his fingers through the hair you keep hidden there and slide them between your thighs."

She felt a shiver go through her. Her thighs rubbed slightly together.

He saw the movement. He smiled. He shifted his stance. "Are you wet?"

"Why are you doing this?" She demanded in a whisper.

"Do you know why men like breasts?"

She crossed her arms over her chest to hide her breasts, but her hands sliding over the linen undertunic only served to stimulate them. "Jaime..."

"Do you know that a man will suckle at a woman's breast just like a babe?"

Brienne couldn't help her gasp. A string tugged between her nipples and her center. Her thighs moved and slipped together again. "Save this for your sister," she managed to sputter.

"Come out of that room and I will show you. I will take your nipple in my mouth, I will hold it with my teeth, I will suck on it and you will beg for more," he said, and she believed him. His gaze was like a flame, leaving burns wherever it touched her. Her thighs could no longer keep still, her breath refused to even out, and the moisture he spoke of was there, waiting for his touch.

"Come and show me," she said, finding courage from somewhere, needing him to admit it was all in jest. "Come to me in this bed and I will not turn you away."

He swallowed, his nostrils flared, but he did not move. "I will spread your legs, Brienne, and I will bury myself between them. Red is my color and it will stain your thighs when I enter you. You'll wonder how you ever existed before I was inside you. Come here. Now."

There was no jest in the look he gave her. She swallowed.

"You can see that I want that," she whispered, deciding she would enter this melee as though she were the sort of woman who had the right to fight in it. "Step across that threshold and take me."

"Why should your maidenhead lie shriveled and dead in some tomb on Tarth when we could both have a moment's peace?"

"Why should it?" She felt bolder now. "Come and take it."

"Come to me."

"Come to _me_."

"I will not dishonor you."

"You have talked of nothing else."

"If you come to me-"

"It wouldn't be you dishonoring me, it would be me dishonoring myself?"

"Yes."

"You are lying to yourself, Jaime. Go find some other woman whose honor matters less to you than mine. Close my door. Go to Myranda Royce, she looks at you as though she wants to take you to bed."

"As you have been looking at me all day?"

"You should never have kissed me," she answered.

"You should never have let me," he said. He gave her a small smile, a movement in the dark gold of his beard. "I want no other woman, Brienne."

"I cannot bear to be parted from you, Jaime," she whispered.

"Then don't leave me, damn you," he said, gripping the door post hard. "Come with me. I need you. I won't touch you."

"I must-"

"Why? Because your father wants you dead in his defense? I will not believe it. He is doubtless grateful you were nowhere near your bloody rock in the Narrow Sea when the attack came."

"If it were _your_ father, Jaime-"

"Don't-"

"If it were _your_ Rock-"

"Enough. You insist on being a fool and I cannot follow you. I must not."

"I know," she said. "I would never ask."

"I want to follow you."

"But you will not."

"I want to follow you because you would never ask," he said, his voice turning soft.

"Why, Jaime? Tell me why."

"It has nothing to do with Tyrion," he said, holding her gaze, his eyes sharp and bright. "I did not know why then, and I still do not. I don't know why."

"We will part soon. You will return to her, you will forgive her, and in a year's time you will have forgotten this night," she said, sad and sure, longing for him to deny it, treasuring the things he had said like the rare gifts they were.

_I will have this night,_ she thought. _Once, a man such as this wanted me, even if it was only madness._

Jaime smiled at her then. It was a smile with no mirth. "You know we'll both be dead in a year's time. Nothing will be left of us but a song or two, and none of them kind."

Brienne could only stare at him.

He threw the tunic back at her then. "Wear it when you die. That should excite a singer or two."

Then he turned away from her, kicking the chair out of the way before he disappeared from her view. She heard him undress, heard him hang his sword on the bedpost, heard him slip beneath the furs.

She draped the tunic over her bedpost and lay her head down on the pillow, praying the snow would continue for another day.

In the dark you'd be as beautiful as any other woman.  
-Brienne VII, A Feast For Crows, George R. R. Martin


	8. Keeper Of Oaths

Jaime lay in bed trying to sleep. He watched the fire in the hearth, he watched the snow fall against the window, he watched Brienne's open door. She would not come to him, he knew she would not. Fear, or stubbornness, or honor, or some combination thereof would keep her firmly in her own bed. He cursed her for it and he blessed her for it, and in the end he rose and threw his tunic back on and strapped his sword back about his waist.

The dining hall still bustled. Around the hearth some of the younger crowd was gathered, Sansa awkwardly seated between Ser Harry and Lady Myranda as they all played some game involving sips from two goblets of wine passed amongst them.

Lord Nestor and the Blackfish were seated with some of the older knights around the center of the high table. Jaime noted the way they all surreptitiously glanced at him in turn. _Plotting,_ he thought.

At one of the smaller tables, Sandor sat drinking; Hyle Hunt was seated next to him picking through a bowl of dried fruit. The looks they gave Jaime said they'd noticed when Jaime had followed Brienne earlier. Pod was seated at the end of the table curled in one of the lordly arm chairs fast asleep.

"That didn't take long," Sandor said when Jaime sat down across from him. "Should've given her the whole night, you being a bloody knight and all. Chivalry, courtly wooing, whatever the fuck it is you pretend to abide by. She's no tavern wench."

Hunt rolled his eyes, shifted in his chair and gave Clegane a warning glance. "She is a lady."

"So she is," Jaime said, pouring himself some wine. "And very much a maiden, if anyone cares to hear the truth."

"Not for lack of effort on your part," Hunt said, giving him a challenging look.

"Nor for lack of effort on your part," Jaime said, tired of dancing around Hunt and his pathetic attempts to woo the Maid of Tarth.

"I'm not some bored white-cloaked tourney knight amusing myself whilst far from home," Hunt said. "I'd marry her."

"You'd marry Tarth, or the hope of it, let us not fool ourselves," Jaime said, dropping his golden hand onto the table as his voice dropped to a whisper. "Your faint affection is meaningless to her, she'd never have you."

"And you understand her so well. I respect what she is and I would treat her well-I would treat her _honorably_," Hunt said vehemently.

"Go to her then, ask her to wed you again and hear her reply. Creep into her bed and see how you fare. I am not the cause of your spurning if that's what you think," Jaime said. "You have yourself and your gold dragon to thank for that."

"I've already heard your thoughts on the bet," Hunt spat.

"And felt them," Jaime said softly, remembering the feel of his fist meeting Hunt's jaw after they'd _discussed_ the bet while sparring.

Hunt started to lunge across the table for Jaime, but Sandor stopped him with a firm hand to the chest. "You'll upset the ladies," Sandor said sarcastically with a swift nod toward the group at the hearth who were watching Jaime and Hyle with eager expectation of a brawl.

Hunt sat again and gave Jaime a glare. The man leaned forward shaking his head slowly and in a low voice whispered, "I don't love her, it's true; but I care for her and I would wed her. A husband could keep her from killing herself; _I_ could keep her alive. Give her children, take her home. What will you give her? Another hopeless quest? Dishonor? What will happen to her when you're no longer snowbound in the Vale and you are bound for the Westerlands? How will she fare when you see her side by side with your sister? Do you imagine that will be a kindness?"

It was Jaime who stood this time, knocking his chair over and waking Pod with the crash as he leaned over the table and grabbed Hunt by the front of his tunic.

"You will _not_ speak of my sister," Jaime hissed, knowing the whole hall heard. But, for the space of a breath, he did not know why Hunt's eyes suddenly widened with triumph.

Hunt looked all innocence and raised his hands in surrender. "Forgive me, my lord, I forgot myself."

With a grunt, Jaime released Hunt and the hedge knight stood and gave Jaime a nod before he walked toward the end of the hall where Brienne stood quietly in the doorway, risen from her bed where he'd left her. She was wrapped in her fur cloak, snow dusted her hair and shoulders as though she had just come in from outside, the muscles of her jaw were pulled taut and her chin was held high.

Jaime had known she was there as soon as Hunt's demeanor had changed. And when Jaime met her gaze she almost seemed to smile as she inclined her head toward him in an acknowledgement of some sort, almost as though she'd expected to hear what she'd heard. Then she looked at Pod and beckoned him silently with a flick of her eyes. Her squire jumped to follow her out of the hall.

Leaving his fallen chair where it lay, Jaime sat where Pod had been at the end of the table and glanced around the room, daring them all to keep watching him. The buzz of conversation returned as the rest of the hall turned back to their own business.

"You won't get in there now," Sandor said softly as Jaime resumed drinking his wine.

He glanced at the big man at his side. "If I could, I'd kill you," Jaime said quietly.

Sandor gave his deep, raspy laugh. "You shouldn't have given the sword back to her if you want to kill me."

When Jaime had held Oathkeeper the morning before, it had purred sweetly for him, seduced him with its edge, lured him with each thrust. It had made him want to roar, it made him want to weep with joy, it made him want to fuck. For the time he had wielded that blade, he had been a whole man again. He had wanted to shout with triumph when he knocked Brienne to the ground, but then he had looked down to see her stricken face. She had given Oathkeeper to him, must have known what it would do for him, and only the thought of the wench facing her foes without it had forced it from his hand.

"I liked you better when you weren't drinking, Clegane."

"I like you better when I _am_ drinking," Sandor said with his ruined smile.

"Maybe it wasn't the drink you missed most while you were with the brothers; it may be a woman is what you need," Jaime said softly, noting the way Sandor's gaze flitted to the crowd before the hearth.

"Do you think everyone needs a woman just because you can scarce go a fortnight without one?" Sandor snapped back at him.

"I think you long for one woman," Jaime said softly. "I think you left Joff because he had something you wanted and you were sick of watching him treat it poorly."

"She's only a girl," Sandor said, giving him a dark glare.

"Yes. And you've pledged your service to that girl."

"Go find _your_ girl. She deserves better than you, but she's too stupid to know it," Sandor said with deadly softness. "And if you ever talk to me about women again, I'll remove your head and send it to Doran Martell to use as a footstool."

Jaime only smiled.

His brother's wife watched his exchange with Clegane from the corner of her eye and if she guessed what they spoke of, her face did not give her away. Jaime wondered if Tyrion had known of the bond Sansa had formed with Joff's Hound.

With one last sip of wine, he rose and made his way to the balcony doors, slipping out into the softly falling snow.

Across the courtyard, in the glow of firelight spilling through a window, he saw Brienne talking with Pod. Their words were lost in the distance and the cold night air, but Jaime could guess what they spoke of when he saw Pod's chin fall forlornly to his chest and watched as Brienne bent her knees to crouch before her squire, her hand awkwardly patting the boy on the shoulder. Pod threw himself at her, his arms flying around her neck in a way Brienne seemed lost to understand for a moment before she put her arms around the boy and squeezed him back.

Jaime watched them, wondering if Tommen would ever hug him that way, knowing his son would not, and feeling a strange envy as Brienne set the boy away from her. Her gloved hand clapped Pod's shoulder again as she sent him off to bed. Brienne had turned to walk through a cleared pathway back toward the hall. Jaime left the balcony and the hall, intercepting her at the foot of the stairs, a torch lighting the dim entrance as she closed the door from the courtyard.

"You told Pod goodbye," he said.

She glanced his way, but her eyes did not meet his. _Where is the woman who just dared me to take her maidenhead?_. "I told him he will stay with Ser Brynden when I go," she said.

"He knows you care for him. You would have sacrificed the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard for his sake."

It was beneath him and he didn't know why he said it, but her face clouded at his callousness and something of the wench he'd met in the dungeons of Riverrun flashed in her eyes. She raised her chin and challenged him with her gaze. "Draw your sword if you wish to fight, Jaime; I'm weary of sparring with words."

_Hunt is right. You deserve better than anything I can offer you._

"Hunt wants you."

"I will not discuss him with you again."

"He likely wanted to marry you from the beginning, even with his stupid bet."

"Perhaps," she said. "Tarth is worth more than a purse of gold dragons. But I will talk no more of it. I count him as a friend and I will not reproach him further for the bet or for speaking to you of my past."

"When did he speak to me of your past?" Jaime asked.

Brienne rolled her eyes and looked at him defiantly. "He told you of Brienne the Beauty, he told you of my suitors."

"No, Brienne," Jaime said. "Red Ronnet Connington told me of your suitors."

A flush crept its way up her neck and all the quiet confidence she had regained began to drain from her as she looked down at the floor. "_Oh_," she choked out.

Jaime remembered the sight of Red Ronnet's face in the light of his lantern as he peered down at the bear's rotting bones.

"He was at Harrenhal with me when I garrisoned it for Baelish. I was walking at night, looking for a place to spar and found him examining the bear pit."

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye; she looked like she wanted to flee. "Why?" she asked quietly.

"He asked me if it was true you fought the bear naked," Jaime said as her blush grew darker. "The tale of our time with the Goat grows. Imagine what it will become when you die wearing my colors."

She looked away from him.

He continued. "The way Connington questioned me about your bear fight, it sounded as though he knew you. I asked him how he spoke of you with such knowledge and he told me the most interesting tale. Can you guess what it was?"

"The rose," she whispered.

"The rose."

"That must have amused you," Brienne said, her voice stronger again though she did not look at him.

"It did not."

"I've always amused you. Sandor Clegane says I am your pet and this," she paused, gripping Oathkeeper's hilt, "is my leash."

"You are the worst behaved pet with the most priceless leash in Westeros, then."

"I beat Red Ronnet Connington to the ground when last I saw him," she said, anger and bitterness making her rise to her full height. She looked him in the eye.

"Of course you did," he said softly. _So did I._

"I am no man's pet," she said as she brushed past him to climb the stairs.

"Least of all mine," he said.

Jaime wondered if he imagined the pause in her steps as she ascended. He wondered why he couldn't leave her alone.

Cersei hovered like a haze over him as he followed Brienne up to the chamber they shared but didn't share. He would never be free of Cersei.

When he walked past Brienne's door, her hurt, resentful glare followed him.

_Remember my sister, Brienne, and I will remember her too._

The next morning Jaime closeted himself with Lord Nestor and the Blackfish in Baelish's old solar. For two days they had schemed and argued, made lists of allies and enemies, lists of men and horse, lists of grain and livestock, lists of possible marriage alliances. Jaime was sick of it. _Two soldiers and an over-reaching castellan playing at statecraft,_ he thought. Tyrion would have laughed. Cersei would have laughed. His father would have curled his lip in disgust.

"We could approach one of the Florents," Lord Nestor was saying.

"If we're going to approach Stannis we had best do it directly," the Blackfish said.

"If you're going to approach Stannis you had best be prepared to face his headsman," Jaime said. _As I will._

"Even Stannis must bend. If these rumors of the Others at the Wall are true, he cannot afford to turn away allies," the Blackfish said.

"On your head be it," Jaime said. "Mace Tyrell holds King's Landing in Tommen's name, I can take that power from him, but who can say which ally he would turn to next? It's difficult to imagine the Tyrells and the Martells uniting, but perhaps under the banner of a Targaryen pretender they can stomach it. More likely Mace will turn to Stannis, Willas is still unmarried and some would say greyscale and a crippled leg make an even match."

"If you were to offer the lady Myrcella for Willas Tyrell, perhaps-"

"No," Jaime said, cutting off Lord Nestor. He thought of Myrcella, somewhere between Dorne and King's Landing, scarred and alone. He thought of Red Ronnet's sneering face when he spoke of meeting Brienne. "I will make no match for Myrcella, as I told you. And certainly she will marry no Martell or Tyrell."

Talk turned then to Tyrell bannermen and they again pored over the information Hyle Hunt had uncomfortably agreed to give them the day before. Sansa had been brought in as well, though she'd known far less of her father's bannermen than Ser Brynden or Jaime. She had given interesting tidbits about Baelish's plans, however, and she had contradicted what the Blackfish had to say about her bastard brother who was now Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. The Blackfish had wanted to bring Brienne in to question her about the storm lords, but Jaime had put him off. He didn't want to hear what she would have to say when she understood they were trying to treat with Stannis.

And try they would. For two days ravens had flown from the Vale, west and north and south and further south. Ravens to the Wall, the Citadel, the High Septon. One raven had even gone slightly east to Gulltown to be put on a ship to cross the Narrow Sea. Ravens to enemies and ravens to allies and everyone in between had flown. But only two had Jaime written with his own halting left-handed script.

_Come home._

"We must decide how to approach the Northern lords. How quickly can you declare yourself regent?" the Blackfish asked him.

They never let him forget the greatest jest of them all.

"Not until I reach Casterly Rock," Jaime replied, wanting to roll his eyes at the absurdity of it. Cersei would not give Tommen up easily.

_I know you want my head, but it will be on a spike before you can return._

"If Arya can be located," the Blackfish said, "we can peel the Northern lords away from Bolton."

"Surely they already know their Arya is false," Jaime said.

_By the time this reaches you, you will be the only one left to whom I can entrust Tommen and Myrcella._

"There is little to be done in the North in winter anyway, but we must prepare for spring," Ser Brynden said.

"Those of us who will see it," Jaime said.

The Blackfish laughed.

_Tommen will pardon you. Take the Rock. I beg you, come home. Forgive me. I know what I have done._

They continued to play at politics until a servant came to advise them of the evening meal. In the dining hall, Jaime was seated at his customary spot in the middle of the High table. Sansa was seated at his side as usual.

The air was filled with the warm scent of freshly baked bread for the first course and when a platter was placed before him, Sansa broke off a piece and laid it on his plate.

"Thank you, my lady," Jaime said.

Sansa frowned but gave him a small nod.

He leaned closer to her and whispered, "And thank you for what you told Brienne about Tyrion."

Sansa flattened her lips into a thin line of displeasure. "You are welcome, my lord."

"I may never see my brother again," Jaime said.

"Perhaps," Sansa replied.

"You will likely never see him again either," he whispered.

"I suppose."

"Of course, you're married to him all the same," Jaime said. "Though with some effort it could be annulled as you're still a maid."

"Yes," Sansa whispered, looking down at her hands.

"If it is annulled, they'll find you a handsome new husband. Baelish had betrothed you to Harry the Heir, had he not?" Jaime asked innocently, glancing down the table at the convenient tableau Ser Harry was enacting.

Sansa glanced a few seats down the table to where Lady Myranda was leaned over Ser Harry's shoulder in a shameless attempt to drape her breasts against his arm. "Yes," she said softly, distaste creeping subtly into her tone.

"Fortunate you are yet a maid, then. Who can guess what value you may still be to your family? They could marry you to one of any number of handsome young lordlings, who would surely be preferable to my absent, ugly little brother," Jaime said softly, watching Sansa's mind work as she processed his words. _There's a clever girl,_ he thought.

Jaime glanced down at the end of the table where Clegane sat staring into a goblet of wine.

Brienne was beside Sandor, sitting tall and wary with the tension of one who expected an attack. Jaime wanted to muss her hair so some of it flew free of the tight knot she wore at the nape of her neck, he wanted to put a sword in her hand, and some color in her cheeks, some color on her _lips_, he wished there would be some sunlight so her freckles would return, then he very carefully hoped for the snow to continue and the sun to stay away. He wanted her to look at him. _Damn her._

Ser Brynden entered the hall and marched toward the high table, stopped across from Jaime and leaned over the table to slap a small piece of parchment down on top of the bread Sansa had placed on his plate. Jaime took the paper and read it. He read it once quickly, then a second time to be sure.

The parchment fell back to his plate. Sansa took it.

He would swear he could hear the sound of Arthur Dayne's laughter echoing from somewhere in the past.

"It must be Arianne Martell," the Blackfish said. "I know what you will say, but hear me out-"

Jaime threw his golden hand up in the air to cut the Blackfish off. He glanced down the table, but he could not see her, she had left her seat.

Sansa handed the note to Lord Nestor who had been reading it over her shoulder.

"Bring Lord Jaime some strongwine," Sansa murmured to a passing servant.

"What is it father?" Lady Myranda asked Lord Nestor, moving back toward the center of the table. The room had become quieter.

Or maybe it was just Jaime's blood rushing in his ears.

"It could be undone," Sansa said softly.

Jaime scanned the room, his eyes refusing to focus on his search.

"Arya Stark," Lord Nestor said. "Surely it must be."

The Blackfish laughed. "Never."

Sansa thrust a goblet at Jaime. When she tapped it against his chest he took it, but he did not drink.

"What _is_ it, Father?" Lady Myranda asked, her brother crowding at her shoulder across the table from Jaime.

Jaime glanced around him again. Where was she?

"Ser Garlan Tyrell is recalled to King's Landing to stand as champion for his sister Queen Margaery," Sansa answered.

"But how can Ser Garlan join the Kingsguard? He is married," Ser Albar Royce said.

"The Kingsguard has been dissolved by order of King Tommen. A decree was signed before his mother fled with him from King's Landing," Lord Nestor said.

"By order of Mace Tyrell," Jaime corrected, his throat feeling raw. _And signed by a young boy who has been trained to put his seal on any paper set before him, Cersei you fool._

He thought of the white book and his yawningly empty page in it. _The Kingsguard fell on my watch,_ he thought. _My own son signed the order._

Lady Myranda sat down next to the Blackfish. She leaned forward onto the table, her ample bosom on display.

"They are holy vows," Ser Albar said. "Surely the High Septon-"

"Will not get into a theological argument that would make him look like he only wants Margaery Tyrell's champion to be weak," Lord Nestor said.

"It is worth exploring," Ser Albar insisted. "If the Tyrells are breaking the law, surely it is of import."

Jaime turned to Sansa as the room began to buzz around him. "Have you a septon here?" he asked softly.

Sansa nodded. "Yes."

"Send for him," Jaime whispered.

"Jaime," the Blackfish said, bringing Jaime's focus to him for a moment. He couldn't remember the Blackfish addressing him by his name since his youth. "You must consider Arianne Martell. You could end this trouble before it starts. Even Doran would see the wisdom of it. And Stannis would value the bridge, surely. If Tommen abdicates-"

"Getting into bed with Arianne Martell would be a good way to wake up with my throat slit," Jaime said, his eyes picking through the crowd now hovering around the table.

How odd that the matchmaking had resumed as though it hadn't been paused for nearly twenty years.

"There is the Redwyne girl," the Blackfish said.

"Or perhaps a Florent," Lord Nestor said.

The Blackfish winced. "Surely it won't come to that. But someone close to Stannis, perhaps a lady of the-"

"It could be undone," Jaime said. "When I am regent I can undo it. There must be a Kingsguard."

That set half the table to arguing.

In the chaos, Jaime noticed Sansa staring at him intently and turned to whisper to her, "You are my only family here, what is your advice?"

"Arianne Martell sounds like everything I could wish for you," Sansa whispered, dripping sincerity.

He laughed at the absurdity of it all. "You sound like a Lannister," he said.

Sansa scowled at that.

"My lord," Lady Myranda leaned forward so Jaime could hear her through the noise of the crowd, her lashes flicking coyly at him. "You will want heirs quickly. A bride from the Vale, a daughter of one of Lord Robert's most loyal bannermen mayhaps, would serve to strengthen your ties here."

The Blackfish overheard the lady and looked at her askance. "It is Stannis or a southern ally he courts."

Jaime gave Lady Myranda a knowing smile, but felt his breath catch as he watched her eyes travel to a point high above his chair.

So that's where she was.

Jaime rose and turned to face her. Brienne's eyes held none of the anger or resentment of last night, now they held only concern. She searched his face, silently asking him if he was well. He felt warmth spread in his chest.

_I am as well as any man whose life is crumbling about him,_ he thought.

"Jaime," she said softly, "you could return to...the Sept of Baelor, return to your...worship...at the Mother's altar. Much will have changed since you worshipped there last."

It took him a moment to catch her meaning. "I worship at her altar no more."

She must have read something of his intent in his eyes for she began to slowly shake her head. "You may find favor there now. You are free and your proposal may find willing ears. If not, there are other exalted altars you could choose-"

"Tommen and Myrcella must be my heirs if they lose all else."

She swallowed and looked at him skeptically. "You are far from home and caught up in madness at this news-"

"I may lose part of the Westerlands when I negotiate a peace." _I will certainly lose my head._

Jaime refused to let her look away from him, refused to release her gaze. He wanted to grab her arm, but knew he must not. Her faith in him had become a tenuous thing, he had to tread carefully.

"I must see to my father," she said softly. The look on her face was almost a challenge; almost a child defying a command; almost a dog awaiting an undeserved kick.

"I will be forced to treat with Stannis," he said.

She grimaced and took a deep breath, her gaze holding his with an uncertainty he hated. "I have sworn to kill Stannis," she said, biting her lip.

_Are we negotiating now, Brienne?_

"You can kill yourself trying to reach Stannis. After the war," he said sternly. As though either of them would live that long.

Her brows furrowed, she still looked unsure. "After the war," she agreed softly.

"And I will need heirs first. Four at least, walking, talking, and weaned."

"One heir."

"Four." He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at her. Silly to argue any of it. None of it would matter.

"Two, one for Tarth," she said. "And Casterly Rock will have no say in the governance of Tarth."

"Podrick Payne," Jaime called out without taking his gaze from Brienne, "find my lady's sword in her chamber and bring it to her."

"And I wield my sword when and where I choose," she said resolutely.

"You will see to your father's life. You will avenge your beloved Renly, but not until after the war. And not until after our _three_ soon-to-be motherless children are weaned and walking. Tommen and Myrcella are my heirs, if need be. Neither Casterly Rock, nor any Lannister will interfere with the governance of Tarth, but your fighting men must be mine to command for the duration of the war," he paused and she nodded in agreement. "You wield your sword when and where you see fit. Done?"

"Three children, one for Tarth," she insisted.

"One for Tarth," he agreed.

"My signature must be on any marriage contract for my children," she said, taking a deep breath and rising to her full height.

Jaime sighed and bit back a smile. "Done."

Podrick returned with Oathkeeper and handed it to Brienne. Jaime noticed her hand shook slightly as she gripped it by the scabbard and held it between them. He closed his hand over the hilt. For the first time he realized the hall had become utterly hushed.

"I swear I will abide by these terms," Jaime said. Then he called over his shoulder, "Ser Brynden, you will bear witness?"

"To all who will listen," the Blackfish answered. "You have witnesses, my lady. Doubtless you will need them."

Brienne closed her right hand about Oathkeeper's hilt, flinching when their skin touched, dropping her gaze from his. "I swear," she said, so softly Jaime thought he alone must have heard it. But he needed no witnesses.

Moving his grip to Oathkeeper's scabbard, Jaime pulled it from Brienne and handed it back to Pod. "Keep your lady's blade for the night, Pod. I saw what she did to the last man who tried to bed her."

Jaime glanced at Sansa. "The sept?" he asked.

Sansa, wide eyed, beckoned them to follow her. Jaime gripped Brienne by the wrist and set off after his good-sister. The septon had not arrived when they reached the sept, so Jaime pulled Brienne into a curtained alcove off the corridor. In the dim light, he backed Brienne toward a window, the closer he got, the more the warm scent of her skin called to him.

"You need not do this, Jaime," she whispered as he leaned into her.

"This?" he asked as he kissed her, taking her plump lower lip between his teeth to open her mouth. He pushed her back to sit against the window sill, his tongue taking her mouth with the same rhythm he used to rock himself into the cradle of her thighs.

He had wanted her for so long he could think of nothing but the feel of her.

Her hands slipped between them, she pressed firmly against his chest until he broke the kiss.

"Jaime," she said, breathlessly, "I will come to your bed tonight. You need not wed me. I will say that I must wait for my father's permission. We will find some excuse to delay and this will be forgotten."

"Why?" he asked, his right wrist wrapped low around her hips, using the golden hand to pull her to him. With his left hand, he cupped her cheek.

She shook her head and pulled back from him, her gaze sure and resolved. "I do not know what loneliness makes you want me this way, or what madness makes you think to wed me, but you would not want this if you were not sure we will die. But we may live, Jaime. And if you could see Cersei now, if you could look her in the eye, you would not think to wed me. You still love her, you love her in the marrow of your bones. When you return to her, when you _see_ her, you will want her again."

He stilled.

"Yes," he said, for a lie would gain him nothing. "I will want her, but I will never touch her again. Even if you leave me here and break this betrothal, I will never touch her again."

"If we live, you will regret this. In a year's time it will seem utter folly. You were right. What good is my maidenhead if I die? Or even if I do not, I have never intended to wed, so it is meaningless. I will share your bed until we part and we will leave it at that."

He leaned forward and kissed her gently. "Do you think I would wed you just to fuck you?"

Even in the dim alcove, he knew she blushed.

"_Yes_."

"Brienne, I have tried to leave you behind and I have tried to send you away, but always you haunt me. Do not pretend not to know what is between us."

It was every bit of truth he could give her and he hoped it was enough. She looked away from him, but she nodded.

He kissed her again.

"Lord Jaime?" Lord Nestor called from the corridor. "My lord, the septon is arrived."

"Come," Jaime whispered, weaving his fingers with hers and pulling her behind him. "Let us be done with it."

The gawking crowd from the hall had followed them into the corridor. Jaime met Hyle Hunt's eyes, the hedge knight gave him a small smile and a nod. He nodded back as they ducked into the sept. Petyr Baelish's body was laid out in the middle of the room and the fat little septon stood scowling between the altars of the Mother and the Father. The whole thing would have been quite amusing if Jaime hadn't been well past the point of laughter.

"My lord," the septon said as they stood before him. "Perhaps this could wait until Lord Baelish-"

"I am lately of the Kingsguard, septon. If you were freed of your vow of celibacy this night, how long would you wait to take a woman?"

The septon huffed, but began his prayers. Jaime looked over at Brienne. She was bright red, her chin stubbornly held high as she tried to pretend she wasn't mortified. He turned to face her fully, his right arm slipping around her waist. She looked slightly more embarrassed, but leaned into him when he brought his face close to hers.

"Would your father approve?" he asked in a whisper only she could hear, hoping to distract her.

She grimaced.

"Kingslayer?" he asked.

She nodded.

The septon guided them through their vows and Jaime said his quickly, Brienne fumbled through hers.

He pulled her closer as the septon droned into another prayer.

She let her temple rest against his. He turned his head slightly and let his lips brush hers. She caught his lower lip between hers, holding it for the space of a breath and the feel of it made his arm tighten reflexively around her waist, pulling her closer. He threaded his fingers into the hair knotted at her neck and kissed her again.

She hummed softly as his tongue entered her mouth, meeting him in a dance she was quickly learning. Her leg had just begun to hitch up against his when he heard the septon clearing his throat.

"My lord. _My lord,_ this is obscene," the septon hissed.

Faintly, Jaime heard a rustle of whispers in the group of people squeezed around the doorway of the sept.

"It _will_ be obscene if you don't hurry," Jaime spat.

"The cloaks, my lord," the septon said, in a tone that made it clear he'd already asked and been ignored.

Cloaks. He looked at Brienne. She wore none. He had neither red nor white.

"My bride is heir to her house and will keep her own colors," Jaime said. "She will wear mine if and when it pleases her."

The look on her face said she knew his words were all bluster, but she looked at the septon and nodded her agreement.

"No cloaks," the septon said reproachfully. And then the man just stood there watching them quietly with growing exasperation, waiting for something.

At last, Brienne spoke.

"With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband," she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

The kiss. Of course. He smiled.

"With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lady and wife," Jaime said, turning to give Brienne a quick smacking kiss before gesturing for the septon to continue.

The septon had barely finished muttering something about their house names and curses when Jaime grabbed her hand again and began to tug her toward the door of the sept.

They wove their way through the silent, gaping inhabitants of the Gates of the Moon who spilled out of the sept and back into the corridor. When they were free of the throng, Jaime picked up his pace.

"No bedding?" Sandor called from behind them.

Jaime shot him a glare over his shoulder.

"Do you doubt there will be a bedding? Listen at the door if you're concerned."

He heard Brienne gasp, but continued on, leading her toward the stairs and their bedchamber.

They tripped their way up, trying to kiss and climb at the same time. Once they were inside the door, Jaime whipped off his tunics and threw them to the floor, then grabbed Brienne, pushing her back into the door to slam it closed as he devoured her mouth. They kissed and wrestled with boots and they kissed and struggled with laces and they kissed and tussled their way to the bed.

His cock was already straining the laces of his breeches when she began to fumble at the straps of his golden hand and by the time she had flung it to the floor, he thought he'd burst them. He pulled her tightly to him as he continued to back toward the bed, pulling off first her overtunic, then the under, until their flesh touched, her small breasts pressed firmly to him.

He pushed at her breeches and they fell to the floor as he threw back the furs on the bed and turned her to slide back onto the sheets. They broke apart briefly then, her hungry gaze growing briefly unsure as his eyes swept down the length of her body. He knelt between her thighs and tried to divest himself of his breeches. When he met her gaze again she was wary and he wanted to kiss her, to reassure her, but was tangled trying to kick off his breeches and couldn't reach so, holding her stare, he brought his mouth down on her nipple instead.

And she arched off the bed as though someone held a knifepoint to her spine. He suckled her and she threw her head back releasing a high, keening sound. She threw her hand between her teeth, trying to strangle the desperate sounds pouring out of her throat. He wanted to tear her hand away, but was too busy wrestling with his breeches.

Finally, he got one leg free and reached up to pull her hand out of her mouth, his cock so hard it nearly bent as it jammed against the skin of her inner thigh and his mouth nearly loosed her nipple as he groaned. She was fighting him, wouldn't let him take her hand out of her damned mouth and as they wrestled, his cock slid against her again, finding its way into the dripping seam of her as though it were being guided.

She froze and he was able to pull her hand away. Jaime moved his hips just a bit and the head of his cock seated itself and she looked at him then as they both moaned. He released her nipple and hooked his right arm under her knee, positioning her, before he dropped to his elbows on either side of her head, his forehead flush against her temple, his hips giving a gentle grind as the head of his cock moved ever so slightly inside her.

"A maid once told me every bride prays her lord husband will spare her maidenhead on her wedding night," he said, gasping at the warm, wet, tight feel of her.

"She was a fool," Brienne whispered back with a moan as he moved further into her.

"This will hurt," he whispered, feeling himself come up against her barrier, not certain which of them he was warning.

"It should," she said, turning her pelvis up to meet him.

"Yes, it bloody well should," he said, pulling back and then plunging through her maidenhead.

He winced, she hissed, but as he seated himself fully, they both groaned in relief.

Jaime's jaw clenched and he pressed his temple to hers as he fought every impulse that was telling him to take her with a fury. He tried to hold perfectly still to give her time to adjust.

She stirred against him and he gritted his teeth. She rocked her pelvis and he took in a sharp breath. Her knees drew slowly up his sides, tilting her sheath around him until he threw his right wrist down to her hip, stilling her movement.

"What. Are you. Doing?" he ground out at her.

"What are _you_ doing?" she demanded.

"I'm _trying_ to be gentle," he said.

"Why?" she asked.

"Oh gods, _why_?" he wondered as he swung out and then slammed back into her. And then it was warfare.

He tried to set a steady pace, but she met him with a jarring, rapid beat that wrapped her burning sheath around him like a fist which, within a dozen thrusts, dragged a climax out of him so fast all he had time to do was shout silently against her cheek. In violent spurts, he came for what felt like minutes, pressing her down into the bed with all his weight.

With a wry laugh he rolled off her and wiped his hand down his face in chagrin, trying to catch his breath. "Never tell anyone how poorly that was done," he said.

He glanced over to see she was staring up at the ceiling, one arm draped over her breasts while the other covered whatever her crossed legs didn't hide of the hair between her legs. He threw the furs over them both to preserve her modesty although he didn't think she moved either of her arms from their guarding positions.

He reached over and brushed some of her hair back from her cheek. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. There was a bewildered air about her; he moved closer. Her blue eyes followed him as he rose up above her on his elbow, she searched his face as a single tear slipped from the corner of her eye.

"_Brienne_," he whispered, catching the tear with his thumb as he leaned down to kiss her. Slowly, she reached for him, her long arms wrapping around his neck. He shifted to the other side of her and ran his hand along her side, his fingers brushing her nipple, following the smooth muscled planes of her, pulling her toward him as he swept his hand around her hip to the firm swell of her buttocks. As she threw herself into the kiss, he slipped his fingers between her thighs, slick with his seed, parting her folds to touch the small nub of flesh that made her hips buck and twist as he worked her to a slow, hesitant climax.

She was still coming when he realized how hard he was. "Again?" he whispered and she pulled him to her, the warm welcoming heat of her bringing him in as they moved together in a tortuously slow rhythm their bodies had silently agreed upon, accompanied by short gasping breaths and teeth running along jawlines. When he came again, he pulled her with him as he rolled onto his back, tucking her head under his chin, holding her close as they drifted off to sleep.

He reached for her again in the pre-dawn light, her drowsy kisses and the sleepy scent of the skin behind her ear making him want to drown in her.

As the sun rose, he entered her, gripped her tight, and rolled them over trying to convince her to ride him, laughing as she tried to cover her breasts and the hair where they were joined while rocking her hips at a punishing pace. He would pull one arm away from her breasts and she would replace it with the other, a blush rising up her body as a shy smile played about her lips. All he could do was grin at the ridiculousness of it while their lovemaking devolved into arm wrestling. Finally, she collapsed forward onto his chest to hide herself and he wrapped his arms around her, their laughter shaking them both as he gave up and flipped them over again to finish it.

"I've already seen it all," he said, trying to pull off the furs she'd covered herself with as soon as they were done.

Her eyes were shining with mirth, but she gripped the furs tightly to her chest and he couldn't win. They lay quietly watching the snow fall against the window until a servant came in to stoke the fire and leave them water for washing. Brienne melted into the furs at the intrusion, her cheeks red as she slipped the covers over her head. He almost hid himself, some reflexive instinct to keep such a thing secret, but instead he met the servant's gaze, his hand lingering on Brienne's hip under the furs.

When they were alone again, he rose and dressed, noting that she watched him shyly as he went about it. "I should make an appearance at the practice yard," he said as he strapped his sword about his waist and walked toward the door.

"I'll join you," she said, sitting up, though she kept the furs gripped tightly over her breasts.

Jaime stopped with his hand on the door and laughed. "Spare my dignity. Pretend you've been too well used to train for one day at least."

She blushed anew and sank under the furs again, but muttered, "And _my_ dignity?"

"I'll walk with a limp," he said as he left.

Jaime had expected to be harassed at the yard as any newly married man would have been, but instead he was given a wide and respectful berth. He spent the rest of the morning in the solar with the Blackfish and Lord Nestor. At noon he passed Brienne and Sansa in the hallway and he wordlessly grabbed Brienne's hand and dragged her back to their bedchamber.

At dinner that night, Brienne was seated beside him. After the first course, he caught her looking longingly at her former seat next to Sandor. He tried to feed her a morsel off his plate and the mulish look she gave him as she dodged it amused him so much he kept trying to feed her for the rest of the meal. She bit his finger when he tried to slip a dried cherry between her teeth while she answered some question Lady Myranda asked her.

"Do you have fingers to spare?" she asked him warningly under her breath.

Jaime laughed so hard he could scarcely breathe. Then he stood, made a great show of stretching and yawning before he grabbed her hand and tugged her to her feet; she blushingly followed him when he led her from the hall. He met the gaze of anyone who watched them, defying them to comment. But there was nothing but bemusement in any of the eyes he saw. Of course they had every right to run off and fuck whenever they wanted.

And they did. He fingered her to completion in one of the back stalls of the stable while she gasped his name into his ear with every stroke. The morning of Baelish's funeral they snuck out during a prayer and he took her in the bright light of day against the window sill of the curtained alcove off the sept, her breeches hanging off one ankle as her long legs were crossed behind his back, one of her hands covering her own mouth and the other stifling his moans while snow fell against the glass behind her. The Blackfish convinced Jaime to let them question her about the storm lords the next day and when Lord Nestor and the Blackfish left briefly to deliver a message to the maester, he and Brienne came together as if they hadn't touched in months rather than hours and he cursed her breeches, finally pulling them down just enough to bend her over the Blackfish's desk and stuff the head of his cock inside her as she thrust back against him with a deep groan that belied the skepticism she'd shown when he told her it would work, and when she told him to hurry-chanting it breathlessly-lest the others return and catch them, he rammed into her harder, his fingers reaching around through her pubic hair to slip around her engorged little nub, and as he growled that he hoped they would get caught, they both came. The world was never more right than when he was inside her.

But there were other moments as well. On the fourth morning after they were wed, they woke to see the snow had stopped and without saying a word, they simply stayed abed all day until the snow began again just before dusk. The sixth night after their wedding he realized she loathed his golden hand, stopping him so she could remove it before she let him pull her into bed "Only you in this bed," she had murmured and the vehemence of her words as her fingertips soothed the bruises the straps left on his stump had somehow excited him more than the feel of her bare breast in his good hand. On the ninth day, the snow stopped again and did not resume and she had the servants bring them supper in their chamber so they needed not mingle with strangers.

Jaime scarcely thought of the Kingsguard, his white cloak and years of duty in the Red Keep suddenly seemed like the far distant past. He had chosen another road and would not look back.

Cersei came to mind often whenever he was apart from Brienne. A raven had been sent to Casterly Rock announcing his marriage. As soon as Cersei arrived at home she would know. He imagined his sister's reaction a dozen different ways, from murderous rage to tears to vicious laughter. The fact that he would try to take the Rock from her would probably be her most pressing concern. She'd had a taste of governing seven kingdoms and it would be a fight to take the last one she still held. But he must. He needed the gold, he needed the men, and he needed to ensure she didn't have the resources to keep Tommen and Myrcella from him. She would never agree to their abdication, he knew. But he became increasingly certain it was the only way to save them. Once that was done and the Westerlands were secure, Cersei could do whatever she liked. He wouldn't be there to stop her.

Brienne knew, or guessed, what it would mean for him to give the throne to Stannis. Quietly one night while he was adding wood to the fire, she asked who he would leave as guardian of his children after peace could be brokered. Her understanding that he would not survive the process unspoken.

He nearly told her about his attempt to reach Tyrion, but didn't want to see anymore pity in her eyes.

"Cersei," he said.

Brienne had lain back against the pillows, worrying her lower lip with her teeth and refusing to meet his gaze as she almost spoke half a dozen times. He knew what she was thinking, but didn't want to talk to her about it.

Returning to bed, he tried to reach for her, but she gripped his arm firmly. "Stannis will not allow her to live," she said softly.

He tried to smile, but he was caught in the deep understanding blue of her eyes and his lips faltered before he could force them to move. Bad enough she was the Kingslayer's wife, bad enough he would have to taint her name further when he publicly claimed fatherhood of his sister's children, he'd have spared her this, assuming she wouldn't live to hear of it anyway.

"I'll convince him I forced her," he said, trying to sound lighthearted.

"_Jaime_," she whispered, her hands stealing up to cup either side of his face. "No one will believe that."

Then he did laugh, though his throat was a bit tight. "Only you would refuse to believe it."

He turned his head just a bit and kissed the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist, his nose drawing in the calming scent of her there.

She drew him to her then, her arms wrapping around his neck in a fierce embrace and as she buried her face against his neck, he buried his against hers. He let his weight fall on her, expecting her to admonish him for his plan or tell him to find another way, but instead she held him, her long fingers combing through his hair, her warm, strong arms sweeping in comforting circles on his back. He lay like that, breathing in the heat of the nape of her neck until the tenderness of it almost killed him and he had to kiss her to turn it to something else.

Twelve days Jaime had been married when he wrote out his will. The Blackfish bore solemn witness to it all as they lounged in their scheming solar awaiting a returning raven to tell them that the road to the Bloody Gate was passable. He enclosed a note for Myrcella, a note for Tommen, a note for Cersei, and a note for Tyrion. In the end, he even included a note for Brienne, the first lines reading: _You will never read this, lady wife, but how would it look if I left a note for everyone but you? There is always the chance you will not have got yourself killed on Tarth, in which case, well done, I hope this note finds you healthy and desperately missing the feel of my cock, for my cock has certainly missed the feel of you..._

After the meal that night, Jaime sat with Sandor and Hyle. He had asked Hyle to accompany Brienne to Gulltown, and possibly beyond, days before and now handed him the documents they had discussed. The business made him feel underhanded, but he'd said nothing to Hyle he hadn't told Brienne herself. She hated schemes and scheming, but she needed to use some subtlety if she was to have a hope of surviving.

"Convince her to go to Braavos first," Jaime said. "I have tried to tell her it is the only way she can approach Tarth from the sea without someone warning them she's coming and I think she sees the reason in that at least. She refuses to hear me about the sellswords."

"She may be right in wanting to go alone, without sellswords," Hunt said. "They could be bought out from under her, the Golden Company would command respect amongst their own kind."

"No matter that she's Brienne of Tarth, she has married a Lannister, and even a sellsword on Braavos will know a Lannister's pockets are deeper," Jaime said.

Hunt took the papers and said, "I will do all I can. You know how she is."

Jaime glanced over to where Brienne and Pod and Sansa were sitting in front of one of Lord Nestor's hounds by the hearth, tending its wounded paw. _Yes, I know how she is._

Hyle left to join them by the hearth.

"Word is, Stannis is burning people," Sandor said once they were alone.

"I'll ask for a headsman."

"Better poison than fire. Better anything than fire."

"Your concern is moving, Clegane. Do keep my sweet little good-sister safe."

"I'll keep her safe," Sandor said with a tone approaching sincerity.

"I've sent for Tyrion," Jaime said softly, unsure why he said it when he'd been making so much headway toward keeping Sansa in the family.

"How?" Sandor asked.

"Ah, I sent him a note care of the one person in Essos who would want me dead as much as he does. If my guess is correct, he'll find his way to her."

"Is there anyone who doesn't want you dead?"

"Besides my wife? My old nurse is still fond of me, of course she's gone deaf and hasn't heard a word about me for the last twenty years."

Sandor grunted, but he was distracted by the sound of Sansa's laughter as the hound she'd been doctoring sprang to his feet and licked her face.

"What will the Imp want of her?" Sandor asked softly.

"That I cannot say. I know you're not fond of him, but I imagine Tyrion will be the most civilized sort of husband. He would frown on the sort of hypocrisy that would hold his wife's conduct to a higher standard than his own, I think."

"Will he want an annulment?" Sandor asked.

"I do not even know if he will return," Jaime said. "I cannot guess if he would want the marriage annulled or not, it would take years to do it, Mace Tyrell wouldn't let either of them near King's Landing. Even if it is annulled, her uncles will just find someone else. Hopefully he'd be more of Tyrion's disposition than Joff's, but who can say?"

"She could refuse," Sandor said.

"She should. She should point out that despite his desperate need for alliances, the Blackfish still hasn't but his own neck in the matrimonial noose. They say Robb Stark practically had to beg to get Edmure to the altar, the gods know Hoster Tully couldn't force him to it."

Sandor nodded at Jaime with something like gratitude and turned back to watch Sansa again.

That night, after Brienne had ridden him with abandon, her head thrown back as his hands had roamed the muscled planes of her abdomen and the the small firm swells of her breasts, Jaime lay at her side and wondered if she might be with child. She had fallen asleep, but he almost woke her, to ask her if she knew what to do, where to go to get the right herbs, when he wondered how long it would take her to realize it, if it were true. He wondered if in the weeks it would take her to reach Gulltown she might find herself with child and reconsider her foolhardy mission. It was a strange, bitter hope which had nothing to do with longing for a child and everything to do with the hope of saving her life, and he clung to it to lull himself to sleep.

The thirteenth day of their marriage dawned frigid and clear, and in the early morning light, Jaime had no sooner lifted his head from between Brienne's recently satiated thighs than a servant entered their chamber with a message: the road to the Bloody Gate was passable.

There was much to see to in preparation for his departure the next day and he scarce saw Brienne until evening. They supped in the main hall and Brienne asked the Blackfish how long before she could leave for Gulltown. The nearest paths were the trickiest and he said it would likely be two or three more days.

The conversation in the hall was a dull buzz in Jaime's ears as he ticked off in his head the remaining hours until dawn. This would be his last real meal with Brienne and he lost his appetite thinking he would never sit beside her, never tease her as he tried to toss bits of food in her mouth, never feel her timid fingers stroke his thigh below the table when she thought no one would notice, never see the knowing look in her eye when someone engaged him in dull conversation. His food was too dry to swallow and after the second course, Brienne yawned very rudely at the table and said she'd like to go to bed.

"Of course you'd like to go to bed," he whispered as she led him from the hall, trying to sound playful but falling into a wistful tone.

"I want you," she whispered back with desperate sincerity.

He grabbed her and backed her against the wall of the corridor out in the open where anyone could see. Their kiss was fierce and her leg had curled up around his buttock before he pulled back to kiss her neck. "Where do you want me?" he asked.

"In bed," she whispered, trying to pull his mouth back to hers.

"Where do you want me, Brienne?" he asked again, his teeth grazing her earlobe and making her shiver.

"Inside me," she panted. "I don't know how I ever existed before you were inside me."

He smiled as he recognized his own words.

"Are you wet?"

"Yes."

"Are you wet?"

"Gods, yes. I'm wet. All you have to do is look at me."

Her words were like a flaming brand against his spine and he pressed her into the wall, grinding his erection against her as she gasped. His thumb ran circles around her nipple through her tunic. "I'm so hard, I would come if you touched me," he said.

As if he had issued a challenge, he felt her hand reaching between them for his cock.

He stepped back from her and turned away, continuing the walk to their chamber, and in the space of a heartbeat or two, he heard her follow him.

In their room, he stripped and sat on the chair before the hearth and when she came over to him wearing nothing but her undertunic and tried to pull him toward the bed, he positioned her so she straddled him. He held his cock as she lowered herself onto him, her arms draped over his shoulders onto the back of the chair as she planted her feet on the floor and began to fuck him.

Jaime ducked his head under her tunic and teased her nipple with his teeth until she grasped his head and pulled him tight to her breast. He moaned as he flicked her nipple with his tongue, his hips meeting her sliding movements with deeper thrusts as he began to suckle her. She let out the high desperate cry that only his mouth feeding on her could bring, and he smiled against her when he realized she wasn't trying to muffle it. Her motions grew more frantic as she used her legs to fuck him exactly the way she wanted. Then suddenly, she jerked off the undertunic and pulled his lips from one nipple, then stuffed the other one in the mouth in its place. He barely sucked on it before she came with a sharp, shuddering moan, her sheath clamping on him like a vise and wringing a climax out of him that had him gasping against her breast.

Afterward they lay in bed and he tried not to remember that it was for the last time.

"There may be a child," he blurted out, wondering why he couldn't leave himself that one last, small hope that something could keep her from Tarth.

She sighed and lifted her head from his shoulder to look at him. "So quickly? It has scarce been a fortnight."

"It takes scarce the space of two thrusts," he said. "You are still young."

She was about the age Cersei had been when she birthed Joffrey. He tried to push the thought away.

Brienne sighed again and laid her head back down on his shoulder. "I doubt there will be a child," she said.

"Do you know what to do? If you need to?"

She nodded. "My father had...there were women...I think I know what to do."

"Do you want children?"

"Did I not swear to give you three?"

"You knew you would not have to see it through."

She shrugged and looked away from him. "It is difficult to think of impossible things. One day, yes, when there were not so many pressing concerns."

"I would have liked children."

"You have children."

"Children of my own, children who would call me father. I would have liked children with you."

She grew very tense and very still and the faintest, most timid, "_Oh_" slipped through her lips.

He knew he had stumbled into something, had plucked some string in her, though whether good or bad he was not certain. All he could do was plunge ahead. "Daughters are what I want. Three daughters tall as trees."

"Daughters tall as trees," she repeated softly.

"Well, taller than you, anyway. They would need claws, so we would put swords in their hands and you could spend your spare time worrying which of them was worthy of Oathkeeper and I would quietly champion the least worthy, but you would ignore me."

"Taller than me..."

"Mmm. With manes the color of yours, though they would have my curls and not this wild stuff that makes you look like someone's just fucked you til you can't see straight. Curls like me, but your eyes I think, wide and soft and blue. Your smile, but my nose and definitely my teeth."

She traced her fingertip gently across his chest.

"Give them your beard as well," she said quietly, "for if they're taller than me, no man will marry them and at that height they'll need something to protect their faces from the wind."

He laughed. "They won't need husbands, they'll consort with pirates and bear children whenever they wish and call them Lannister, bastards be damned. You'll be forever scandalized but secretly proud and I'll be openly proud and we'll be infamous."

"Aren't we already infamous?"

"More so by the day."

"Songs," she said.

"Songs. Naked songs," he said. She kicked him under the covers. He looked over at her and smiled. "Come spar with me."

She looked down at their entwined bodies. "Haven't we-"

"No," he said, sitting up and reaching for his clothes. "Let's spar."

They slipped into the yard in the faint light of a crescent moon, choosing tourney swords with whispers.

"I don't know why we're whispering," she said, "We'll wake the whole castle with the sound of steel on steel."

He grinned and came at her fast. She answered back with a flurry, using none of her usual stalling tactics, just swinging her sword with speed and precision. They fought with abandon, both of them making mistakes and pounding the other with killing blows. He liked the idea of leaving her with bruises that would linger long after they were parted.

Finally when they had fought to a third draw, she stepped back and said, "We should go back to bed."

He tapped the side of her ribs with the blunted tip of his blade right over the last wound he'd given her. "Mine," he said. She nodded. He tapped the point of the sword to the spot on her inner thigh where he'd cut her the first time they fought. "And mine."

She nodded more slowly this time then raised her own blunted swordpoint and tapped his upper arm where she'd cut him when they fought before Catelyn Stark. "Mine," she said.

"Yours."

She gently nudged the tip against his eyebrow where she had cut him the first time they fought. "Mine," she whispered with a small smile.

"Did you enjoy cutting my handsome face?"

She shrugged, but her smile widened and her eyes danced. "It was the first time I ever wanted to kill a man."

"It was the last time I fought with my right hand," he said softly.

Her head tilted to the side, a knowing look on her face. "I was the last," she said.

"And I was the first."

"You were all I could handle."

"You were better than I thought possible."

"I still hated you," she said, "but I hated them more for what they did to you."

"You were so stupidly noble, but I'd never seen anything like you and I couldn't bear to watch as they broke you."

"I don't know when I stopped hating you."

"I've been hated by everyone I meet for nearly as long as I can remember. But your hatred I could not bear."

"I knew I didn't hate you after you told me about Aerys."

"I was half-dead, but I wanted you in that bathhouse."

"You were still half a god in that bathhouse."

"I wanted to leave you behind."

"And now you will."

"I must."

She nodded. "You're a man of honor, Jaime."

They returned to their chamber and both slept a bit, but in the late midnight hours they came together with a slow, burning desperation that had them sweating and panting by the end of it. Neither slept after that as their final night wore away to dawn. He made her repeat again, as he had for the last three nights, the short list of his bannermen who could be trusted and the long list of those who couldn't. She whispered as she repeated the names of foreign banks with caches of Lannister gold and the ways to access them. He made her swear to come to him once she had secured her father, as swiftly and as safely as she could, and he made her swear she would not attempt to reclaim Tarth if she could save her father without doing so.

They fucked frantically one last time as dawn began to tinge the sky. She helped him dress, strapping on his golden hand and playing squire as he donned the wool and leather and furs he'd bought in Gulltown. Neither of them really spoke and he noticed she would not meet his gaze.

_Farewell, wife,_ he thought, but knew it was too impersonal.

In the courtyard, the fifty men the Blackfish was sending with him to the Riverlands were assembling. Brienne checked his horse's saddle while he said his goodbyes to the Blackfish and Lord Nestor.

"Be the man your family needs, Jaime," the Blackfish said by way of farewell.

Jaime nodded. "If there is any word of Arya Stark-"

"We'll send word," the Blackfish said.

_Goodbye, Brienne._ That felt so cold and final.

Jaime sought Sansa where she stood off to the side by Sandor.

"My lady, farewell," he said.

"Lord Jaime," she said with a nod.

"If you see my little brother..."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but nodded, her fingers almost imperceptibly brushing against Sandor's thigh as she fought for composure.

"Tell him I love him," Jaime said.

Sansa looked taken aback but nodded again.

_Take care, wench._ Brienne would remove his head herself if those were his last words to her. Cersei would love that. He pushed the thought of Cersei away.

Jaime walked over to Pod and clapped him on the shoulder. Hyle Hunt stood behind the boy.

"Pod, it will break your lady's heart to leave you behind. You are as true and loyal a squire as I have ever known."

Podrick's chest swelled a bit, but his face crinkled as his chin dropped to his chest.

Jaime and Hyle shared a quick look. "Thank you," Jaime said. "I know you will do what you can."

"I owe her my life," Hyle said. "Good luck, my lord."

Jaime smiled and turned away. The only thing left was to walk toward his horse and his waiting wife.

Brienne watched his approach with the eyes of a lamb being led to the slaughter. He turned to test the cinch of his saddle, though he knew she'd done it for him, just so he wouldn't have to look at her.

"Jaime," she said, her bare hand clutching at his gloved one. "Do not trust Stannis. Men think his honor is absolute, but he slaughtered Renly like a coward."

"Renly," he muttered, checking his saddle bags, though of course she already had them in order.

"Do not trust in his honor alone; do not put faith in a promise to spare the children," she whispered, grabbing his hand as he began to check the straps on his bedroll.

She wanted him to live, to find some other means than Stannis to save his children, but she knew as well as he did that no one who would make a play for the throne would let him live. And the Martells and Targaryens would not have forgotten the two small bodies wrapped in red cloaks his father had lain before the iron throne. He tried not to think of Tommen and Myrcella.

He turned to her and tried to smile, his gaze focusing on her mouth, on the scar on her cheek, anywhere but her eyes. "Trust no one when you return to Tarth. Question even those whose loyalty you think absolute. Get your father out alive, but wait for spring, wait for the war to end before you try to reclaim Evenfall. Stannis will see to it and if not, hire sellswords, learn to use the name Lannister to purchase what you need."

_She won't live that long, neither will you._

Her long fingers gripped his hand so hard he felt it even through his heavy glove. "Jaime, I release you from your vows. Do not torture yourself in the south when you see her again. Find what comfort may be had-"

He jerked his hand away from her and did look into her eyes then, glaring at her as he turned and stalked toward the stables. Behind him, he heard her boots scrape against the icy ground, so he slipped into the small alley between the stables and the castle wall, and banged open the recently repaired door of the small room where Clegane had gilded Baelish.

She closed the door quietly behind them.

"Do not think," he said through gritted teeth as he turned to face her. "Do not. _Think_. To free me from my vows, from holy oaths I have made to you. They are mine and they are not yours to end."

Unshed tears welled in her eyes as she searched his face and he could see everything she felt for him there, even though he tried not to see it. The things she said with her eyes were a burden, an extra weight he had not the strength to bear. "I would have you find whatever happiness you are able," she whispered, the tears in her voice and on her cheeks now. "I would spare you whatever pain may be spared."

"Then don't-" He paused and looked away from her. He ran his hand over his face trying to calm himself, scraped his fingers across his beard and closed his hand into a fist, pressing it to his mouth.

When he turned back to her, she was wiping the tears from her face with her hands and without thought, he went to her, catching one of her wrists and pressing a kiss there. She looked up at him with her red-rimmed eyes.

"Jaime, I-"

He kissed her and cut off the words he guessed she would say. Her arms wrapped around him and he began to push at her breeches as she tried to kick off her boots. There were crates against the wall and he backed her up toward them as he pulled at his own laces, the cold air likely cruel against her bare skin as he seated her on the tallest crate and entered her in one swift plunge.

"Jaime," she whispered. "_Jaime, Jaime, Jaime..._"

"You're my wife," he gasped into her ear. "_My wife._"

She clutched him to her so tightly he scarce had room to move inside the burning wet grip of her.

"Jaime, I-"

He kissed her and stopped her again as he stroked himself into her.

"Don't," he whispered. "Don't. I cannot give you what I do not possess."

"I never asked."

He pulled back to look at her, his hips continuing their battering pace. "You should," he gasped. "You should demand."

She shook her head desperately, her breath coming in short pants. "Only borrowed you. Could not resist. I-"

Again he kissed her, throwing his weight against her as he came, his fumbling thumb trying to work between them to bring her with him. She brushed his hand away and pulled him tightly to her, her arms squeezing the air from his lungs.

Sobs shook her as she held him and when he pulled back from her, pulled out of the dripping heat of her, he wondered if he would ever be warm again.

Her hands swiped at the tears on her face as he clumsily tried to help her back into her breeches and boots. She was mostly composed when he took her by the hand and led her back out through the throng of men in the courtyard who all pretended they hadn't been waiting for his return.

He didn't say anything as he dropped her hand and mounted his horse. No words of parting could force their way past his lips.

With a nod from Jaime, the Blackfish's young captain signaled for the party to depart. Brienne's hand was clutching his thigh and when he looked down at her, his chest tightened painfully. He leaned over and kissed her one last time then turned his horse away to follow the others, breaking her grip on his leg.

He wheeled his horse around once more before he left through the gate, looking back to meet her gaze across the courtyard. She stood tall and proud, her chin held high in that maddening way of hers, her blue eyes fierce and bright even from this distance. The scar on her cheek fought away the youthfulness of her freckles and the rigidly noble set of her jaw made her look as though she were born to break mortal men. Her hair was a nest of straw, made wilder by their frantic coupling and her lips were red and swollen from the scratch of his beard and his kisses.

"You should always look thus, lady wife," he called out to her in the voice a man used to command his soldiers.

Her eyes dropped shyly for a moment, but when she looked back up at him there was heat and promise in her gaze. A soft, small, knowing smile played about her lips.

He grinned and held her stare for a blink, then looked her over, memorizing this one last sight of her before he turned his horse away and rode out of the Gates of the Moon.

The ride to the Bloody Gate would have taken only a day in summer, but with the slow going of breaking a trail through the snow for fifty men to follow, they were forced to stop and camp for the night. The young Vale captain set a full quarter of the men on watch duty in deference to the mountain clans and ignored Jaime's offer to take a watch himself. So he ate alone beside a welcome fire, supping on salted meet and dried fruit before he retrieved his bed roll, his mind already rebelling at the now strange idea of sleeping alone.

The roll seemed heavy and when he unfurled it, Oathkeeper tumbled out to rest on the snow beside the fire. He retrieved it and sat on the bedroll, cradling the thing in his arms like a child. For a moment he thought about sending it back once they reached the Bloody Gate, but doubtless Brienne would have departed for Gulltown before it could be returned.

He unsheathed it then and almost wished he hadn't. Almost wished he had waited a day or two for when he missed her more and the small parchment that slipped out would have been even more precious to him than it already was when he unfolded it with his clumsy gloved hand.

_Forgive me,_ it read. _Let me close my eyes knowing Oathkeeper is in your hand. Let me sleep dreaming that it will guard you. I have always felt that you were with me when I held it, for your honor is bound within this blade as surely as the spells with which it was forged. Take your honor, Jaime, and wield it._

The fire smoked and stung his eyes and he slipped her sword back into its scabbard with a caress before he curled up in the bedroll and went to sleep.

When they passed through the Bloody Gate the next day they elected to continue on for a few more hours. Cersei had once made a joke at court about Lysa Arryn's bloody gate and he smiled at the memory of it as the stone battlements loomed over his head. It was the sort of joke Brienne would not have appreciated and the thought of the reproachful look she would have given him if she could read his thoughts made him laugh a little.

That night a light snow began to fall as they made camp and the young captain told Jaime they would do well to begin their journey again at the fist hint of light in the sky.

Jaime sat alone before his campfire cleaning Oathkeeper as Brienne always did whenever she had a spare moment, the forever-sharp blade laid out across his lap.

The sound of approaching riders coming from the road behind them did not alarm him, the sentries called greetings of recognition and he assumed the captain would inform him if there were some message. The men milled about the edge of the camp and it was only when he looked up and noticed the enormous size of one of them, and that another wasn't a man at all, that his curiosity was peaked.

A slender woman, cloaked and hooded, approached him followed by a hulking, cowled brother of the Quiet Isle. Sansa had to push back her hood before Jaime could believe his eyes and when she flicked her hand at him he gave up his attempt to rise as he ought. She sat across the fire from him, pulled off her gloves and stretched her hands eagerly toward the flames as Sandor settled beside her. They must have left before nightfall of his last day at the Gates of the Moon and ridden like fools in the dark through the territory of the mountain clans.

Jaime peered at Sandor. "What-"

Sandor just closed his eyes and shook his head in long suffering exasperation.

Pod appeared at Sansa's other side, holding out a cloth-wrapped packet of food. After she had taken it, Sansa looked up at Jaime. "You want my marriage to stand? Perhaps I do as well. At Casterly Rock the decision will be mine," she said. She'd never spoken so many words to him at once before. He wondered how the Blackfish had managed to blunder with her enough to make her flee the safety of the Vale.

"Cersei will want you dead," Jaime told her.

"How well do you imagine my uncle will like that?"

Jaime smiled. So keeping her safe would be his responsibility. Sandor sighed. _Not only my responsibility,_ he thought.

The other two riders approached his campfire.

When Hyle Hunt crouched down beside Sandor, Jaime's heart began to pound and he looked up dumbfounded as the last rider neared. This one was tall, he saw. He would have noticed before if Sandor's bulk hadn't dwarfed the rest of his party.

She threw back her hood when she was a few steps away and unwound her woolen scarf from around her face. Though she met his gaze, there was a hesitancy in her eyes as though she was unsure of her welcome.

He would have risen to greet her if he thought his legs would hold him.

"Did you come for the sword or for me?" he asked her.

She pulled off her glove as she stopped before him, reached into her pocket and withdrew a slip of parchment still rolled as though fresh off the leg of a raven. He pulled off his own glove with his teeth and took the paper from her.

_10,000 gold dragons agreed. Lord Selwyn will be delivered to Gulltown and an exchange arranged._

Jaime grinned and grabbed her bare hand, catching the skin of the inside of her wrist first with his lips, then with his teeth. It had been a desperate idea and Jaime had thought for certain Connington wouldn't allow hostage exchanges until he'd taken his Targaryen pretender and attempted to assault King's Landing.

"There are no sapphires on Tarth, Jaime," she said, her voice cracking in the cold. "How is this to be repaid?"

"Feeling a strange new compulsion to pay your debts?" He looked up at her and gave her arm a jerk, bringing her down with a thud beside him.

"You'll hate the Rock," he said, his hand coming up to cup her cheek.

She sighed and turned to kiss his palm, some of the uncertainty leaving her gaze.

"Cersei will try to kill you," he said.

Puzzlement furrowed her brow briefly, followed by a shrug of indifference.

"Poison, most likely. She will accuse Sansa of the crime," he said.

Sansa's head popped up at that, but he had eyes only for Brienne. And Brienne was smiling now.

"I'll have to find a way to stop her," he said. "Two days without you and my heart was broken. Imagine if you fell dead into your soup."

Her liquid blue eyes softened at that and she gazed at him like a lovesick lackwit. He laughed and pulled her to him, crushing his lips to hers with a bruising kiss.

She would follow him into battle, of course, and he'd extracted all the wrong vows if she would be at his side, but he wanted her too much to worry about that now.

THE END

With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband.

-Sansa III, Storm Of Swords, George R. R. Martin

Shoutout to Sam Cooke, wherever he is on the other side, for the magic that is Bring It On Home To Me which, when played on a meditative loop, allowed me to write the world's awkwardest love scene.


End file.
